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FAITH'S     CERTAINTIES 


FAITH'S      * 
CERTAINTIES 


BY 


J.    BRIERLEY,   B.A. 

AUTHOR   or   "  LIFE   AND  THE   IDEAL,"    "  ASPECTS  OF   THE  SPIRITUAL,"    "  SIDELIGHTS 
ON      RELIGION,"        "  OURSELVES       AND       THE       UNIVERSE,"        "  THE       LIFE       OF      THE 

SOUL,"     ETC, 


BOSTON  :    THE    PILGRIM    PRESS 
LONDON  :  JAMES  CLARKE  &  CO. 


PREFACE 

A  PECULIAR  and  pathetic  interest  attaches  to  this 
volume  of  collected  essays  by  "  J.B."— to  use  his 
famihar  signature,  by  which  he  will  be  affectionately 
remembered  in  every  quarter  of  the  globe.  They 
include  his  latest  writings,  and  the  dehcate  thread 
of  his  hfe  must  have  been  almost  at  breaking-point 
when  some  of  them  were  penned.  Yet  there  is  not 
the  shghtest  trace  of  any  failure  of  his  marvellous 
powers.  The  intelligence  is  as  clear  and  keen,  the 
heart  as  warm  and  sensitive,  the  insight  as  sure  and 
penetrating,  as  ever,  while  the  sense  of  humour,  the 
genial  consciousness  of  the  ironies  of  Hfe,  seems 
positively  to  grow  more  vivid  as  the  writer  feels 
himself  coming  close  to  the  mystery  and  the  revel- 
ation we  call  death.  In  spite  of  infirmities,  "  J.B." 
was  joyous  and  fearless  and  full  of  hope  to  the  end, 
because  his  confidence  was  strong  in  the  Goodness 
that  is  the  Soul  of  all  things,  in  the  Fatherhood  that 
controls  the  hves  and  destinies  of  men.  Nothing 
could  daunt  his  faith,  for  he  always  saw  so 
clearly  how  much  there  is  to  fortify  beHef  in  God. 
That  is  the  underlying  conviction  and  inspiration  of 
this  series  of  essays,  which  therefore  fitly  bears  the 
title  of  "  Faith's  Certainties." 


CONTENTS 


I. 

LIFE  S   MARCHING   ORDERS       . 

9 

II. 

THE    NEW    GENERATION 

19 

III. 

THE   GREAT   FINDINGS 

30 

IV. 

life's   LOOSE   ENDS 

40 

V. 

THE    HEART    OF    THINGS 

50 

VI. 

LIFE   AND   TIME 

60 

VII. 

WHAT    IS    LEFT       .           .           .           . 

70 

VIII. 

MAN    THE    PROPHET 

80 

IX. 

THE  devil's  toll 

89 

X. 

THE    PRICE 

lOl 

XI. 

FACES                .... 

.     112 

XII. 

OF    DEEP-ROOTED    SOULS 

122 

XIII. 

RENUNCIATION 

.     133 

XIV. 

THE    CONVERSION    OF    POWER 

.     144 

XV. 

THE    EVANGELICAL    ROOT 

.     155 

XVI. 

THE    UNREACHED    PARADISE 

.     165 

XVII. 

THE    BURDEN           .           .                . 

.     174 

XVIII. 

ARE   WE  SANE  ?      .           .           . 

.    184 

XIX. 

LINES  LEFT   OUT 

.     194 

XX. 

OF   SELF  EXPRESSION 

.    204 

Contents 

PAGE 

XXI. 

THE    SOMETHING    ADDED 

.         213 

XXII. 

GRACE               .... 

.         223 

XXIII. 

OUR   POSSESSIONS 

.         233 

XXIV. 

THE   SECRET  OF   REST 

•         243 

XXV. 

THE   CURE   OF   SOULS       . 

.         252 

XXVI. 

OF   CHURCH    UNITY 

.         263 

XXVII. 

THE    UNSEEN    BUILDERS 

•         273 

XXVIII. 

THE  SUCCESSOR 

.         283 

8 


FAITH'S     CERTAINTIES 


LIFE'S  MARCHING  ORDERS 

There  are  people  to-day  who  would  dispute  the 
suggestion  conveyed  in  this  title.  "  Before  you  talk 
of  marching  orders  you  must  prove  there  is  an 
orderer/'  We  will  leave  that,  then,  for  the  moment, 
to  come  to  what  is  indisputable.  It  is  certain  at 
least  that  we  are  marching.  If  we  could  imagine  an 
observer  placed  at  some  point  in  the  sky,  and  watch- 
ing from  there  the  course  of  human  history,  what 
would  he  have  seen  ?  The  spectacle  might  be 
described  in  many  ways.  But  there  is  one  term  that 
would  fit  it  with  utmost  exactness.  He  would  see 
a  procession ;  a  procession  that  never  for  one 
instant  faltered  or  halted  in  its  movements.  Through 
all  those  thousands  of  years  the  march  goes  on. 
Through  millenniums  of  barbarism,  of  savagery, 
through  the  rise  of  empires,  civilisations,  religions 
that  are  born  and  die,  the  line  keeps  step.  All  sorts 
of  things  happen ;  but  one  thing  never  happens — 
the  army  never  halts.  The  foremost  files  drop 
off  incessantly  into  the  unseen.  But  its  numbers 
are  constantly  recruited  from  behind.  Death  at 
one  end,  birth  at  the  other.  Here  at  least  is  a 
marching  order ;  the  order  to  move  on.  Every 
individual  of  the  host  hears  it  and  obeys.  We  can 
dam  up  rivers  and  build  ramparts  against  the  sea. 

9 


Faith's   Certainties 

But  no  force,  visible  or  invisible,  that  we  have  yet 
discovered  can  stay  the  rush  of  time.  We  can 
measure  it,  calculate  it,  divide  it  into  moments, 
years,  centuries  ;  what  we  can  never  do  is  to  keep 
one  moment  back,  hinder  its  ceaseless  flow.  When 
we  have  begun  to  live  we  have  begun  to  march. 
Every  experience  we  know — of  utmost  joy,  of  deepest 
pain,  of  weariness,  of  exultation,  of  disillusion — has 
this  common  element.  Whatever  the  moments 
contain  they  will  pass ;  as  surely  as  they  have 
begun  they  will  end.  Is  there  any  other  fact  of  life 
so  tremendous,  so  bewildering  as  this  ?  Carlyle  puts 
the  fact,  and  the  bewilderment  of  it,  in  one  haunting 
sentence  :  "  We  emerge  from  the  inane ;  haste 
stormfully  across  the  astonished  earth  ;  then  plunge 
again  into  the  inane.  But  whence  ?  O  heaven, 
whither  ?  Sense  knows  not ;  Faith  knows  not  ; 
only  that  it  is  through  Mystery  to  Mystery." 

There  is  no  doubt,  then,  about  the  march.  But 
what  as  to  its  meaning  ?  We  have  likened  this 
procession  to  an  army.  But  no  army  we  ever 
heard  of  has  gone  without  its  orders.  The  movement 
of  a  great  force  on  the  war-path  is  a  tremendous 
spectacle  ;  one  which  the  war  correspondent,  the 
modern  historian,  has  often  described.  You  see 
the  roads  choked  with  the  advancing  battalions  ;  the 
ghnt  of  bayonets,  the  hovering  scouts  in  front,  the 
endless  lines  of  baggage  wagons  behind.  You  hear 
the  rumble  of  the  guns,  the  sharp  notes  of  signalling 
bugles.  The  air  is  thick  with  dust,  with  the  smoke, 
perhaps,  of  burning  homesteads.  But  that  formidable 
tramp  is  an  ordered  one.  Through  a  thousand 
channels,  from  aides-de-camp  to  generals  of  divisions, 
and  down  from  them,  through  every  grade,  to  the 

10 


Life's   Marching  Orders 

corporal  with  his  file,  the  one  idea  is  being  worked 
out — the  idea  in  the  single  brain  of  the  Moltke,  of  the 
Napoleon,  who  governs  all.  And  well  for  the  army 
that  has  a  chief  it  can  trust.  Every  private  is  then 
twice  his  own  size  ;  he  is  reduplicated  by  the  sense  of 
his  leader.  From  him  he  has  gained  the  habit  of 
victory,  and  so  has  won  the  battle  before  it  begins. 
And  what  marching  orders  some  of  these  have  been  ! 
Have  we  ever  tried  to  imagine  what  passed  in  the 
minds  of  the  officers,  and  through  them  into  the 
minds  of  the  humblest  private  when  the  word  came 
from  Wellington  for  the  storming  of  a  Badajoz,  of  a 
Ciudad  Rodrigo  ?  What  they  thought  and  felt, 
these  Enghsh  lads,  sons  of  loving  mothers,  with  Hfe 
beating  in  their  veins  just  as  it  does  in  ours  ;  whose 
flesh,  torn  by  shot  or  steel,  would  hurt  just  as  ours 
would  ;  what  they  thought  and  felt  as  they  marched 
in  the  moonlight  towards  that  deadly  breach  ! 
Supposing  we  were  summoned  to  that  sort  of  business 
to-morrow  !  What  stuff,  after  all,  human  nature  is 
made  of  !  When  we  think  of  what  it  has  gone 
through,  and  gone  through  so  cheerfully,  so  heroically, 
surely  it  is  great  stuff.  One  wonders  whether  any 
wandering  planet  of  the  heavens  can,  after  all,  show 
a  better  ?  But  what  we  want  to  note  here  is  that  in 
these  portentous  scenes  the  thing  that  kept  those  men 
steady  in  the  ranks,  that  sent  them  on  over  the  dead 
bodies  of  their  comrades  to  face  steel  and  bomb  in 
their  turn,  was  the  sense  that  they  were  under 
orders.  They  were  there  not  to  enjoy  but  to  obey. 
These  simple  souls  become  heroes  by  one  thing — by 
loyalty  to  their  duty,  to  their  trusted  chief.  And  you 
will  get  nothing  out  of  men,  whether  on  the  battle- 
field or  any  other  field,   without  that ;    without  a 

II 


Faith's    Certainties 

chief  you  can  believe  in,  and  a  sense  of  duty  that  is 
bound  up  with  that  faith. 

Duty  ;  there  is  a  word,  a  marching  order,  indeed. 
Says  Quinet,  writing  to  a  friend  in  what,  to  him,  was 
a  dark  hour  :  *'  Do  not  talk  to  me  of  hope  ;  it  is  too 
deceptive  in  its  nature.  It  makes  me  ill.  I  like 
better  duty,  the  fixed  line,  invariable,  that  one  can 
follow  with  one's  eyes  shut  without  a  mistake." 
Yes,  but  what  is  duty  ;  where  and  how  shall  we 
find  it  ?  To  the  soldier  with  his  chief  there 
visible,  and  his  orders  before  him,  duty  is  a  plain 
affair  ;  not  simple,  heaven  knows,  to  carry  out,  but 
simple  enough  to  understand.  But  for  us  separate 
souls,  cast  in  this  twentieth  century,  with  no  visible 
commander  before  us,  with  a  babble  of  confusing 
voices  around  us,  with  every  imaginable  theory  of 
life  offered  for  our  choice  ;  for  us  creatures  of  passion 
and  of  instinct,  with  the  guides  all  at  quarrel  as  to 
the  ultimate  questions,  how  shall  we  find  out  what  our 
duty  is  ?  What  is  duty,  and,  above  all,  what  are  its 
credentials,  its  sanctions  ?  We  are  minded  specially 
to  ask  this  question  in  view  of  a  recent  statement  by 
an  eminent  publicist.  Mr.  William  Archer,  in  an 
article  which  appeared  recently  in  a  daily  paper, 
discusses  the  question  of  "  Eternal  Verities." 
"  Eternal  Verities  "  was  a  phrase  he  had  copied,  in 
order  to  criticise,  from  a  book  by  Dr.  H.  B.  Gray  on 
"  The  Pubhc  Schools  and  the  Empire."  Dr.  Gray's 
"  Eternal  Verities  "  are  what  he  holds  to  be  the 
religious  truths  offered  us  in  the  New  Testament. 
We  are  not  here  holding  a  brief  for  Dr.  Gray's  views 
either  of  the  Old  or  the  New  Testament.  Our 
concern  is  with  Mr.  Archer's  contention  as  to  the 
relative  merits  of  morality  and  religion.     He  asks  : 

12 


Life's   Marching  Orders 

"Is  it  quite  wise,  then,  to  rest  the  sanction  of 
moraUty  on  any  individual  set  of  theological  verities, 
seeing  that  morality  has  certainly  existed  before 
them,  and  apart  from  them,  and  would  as  certainly 
continue  to  exist  if  they  proved  to  be  no  verities  at 
all  ?  "  He  adds  :  ''  Surely  the  truth  is  that  in 
founding  morality  upon  theology  we  are  basing  the 
more  certain  upon  the  less  certain.  The  evidences 
of  morality  are  in  and  around  us  at  all  times  ;  the 
evidences  of  any  particular  religion  are  largely 
historical,  and  no  historical  fact  can,  in  the  nature  of 
things,  be  as  certain  as  a  fact  continually  verified 
in  actual  experience.  .  .  .  The  most  ancient 
theological  verities  are  imparted  to  the  world — or 
rather  to  this  or  that  portion  of  it — at  this  or  that 
historic  date.  The  moral  verities  are  immeasurably 
prehistoric." 

This  is  all  very  interesting,  and,  to  us  at  least, 
very  strange.  Mr.  Archer's  indictment  may  be  put 
into  three  propositions.  First,  morality  is  superior, 
as  a  guide,  to  religion,  because  it  is  older.  Secondly, 
religion  is  inferior  because  it  is  historic.  Third, 
morality  is  safer,  because,  in  contrast  with  it,  religion 
cannot,  as  can  morality,  be  continually  verified  in 
experience.  There  is  a  fine,  breezy  assurance  about 
these  statements  which  is  in  itself  attractive.  But 
how  far  do  they  conform  to  the  facts  ?  Mr.  Archer's 
historical  researches  may  be  very  extensive.  They 
are  certainly  more  extensive  than  ours  if  they  have 
enabled  him  to  discover  any  existent  morality,  or 
dawn  of  morahty,  that  is  older  than  rehgion.  All  we 
know  of  the  prehistoric  comes  from  the  hints  sug- 
gested by  the  historic.  And  unless  our  reading 
has  been  on  entirely  wrong  lines,  the  lesson  it  teaches 

13 


Faith's    Certainties 

is  that  the  earliest  races  of  which  history  offers  us 
any  information,  give  us  always  religion  as  the  basis 
of  their  morality.  India,  Assyria,  Egypt,  they  are  all 
alike  in  this.  Says  Boscawen  :  "  Six  thousand  years 
ago  man,  in  Egypt  and  Chaldea,  stands  before  us, 
pure  in  his  tastes,  lofty  in  his  ideals,  and,  above  all, 
keenly  conscious  of  the  relationship  which  exists 
between  himself  and  his  God.  It  is  no  dread,  but  the 
grateful  love  of  a  child  to  his  father,  of  friend  to 
friend,  that  meets  us  in  the  oldest  books  of  the  world." 
And  if,  setting  history  aside,  we  look  for  the  pre- 
historic conditions  in  what  we  find  amongst  the 
existent  savage  races,  shall  we  find  in  any  of  them  a 
morality  which  exists  apart  from  and  independent  of 
religion  ?  If  such  there  be  we  shall  be  glad  to  have 
news  of  them. 

But  the  religions  are  inferior  because  they  are  all 
historical.  They  came  into  existence  at  such  and 
such  dates.  Well,  what  would  you  have  ?  Is 
there  anything  in  the  visible  universe,  from  the  spiral 
of  a  nebula  to  spring's  first  cuckoo,  that  is  not,  in  a 
way,  historical,  that  has  not  its  date  assigned  ? 
Is  not  morality  historical  ?  And  as  to  religion,  how 
do  we  suppose,  in  nature's  order  of  things,  that  the 
great  religious  personalities  could  appear  before  a 
time  which  was  equal  to  producing  them,  and  equal 
to  receiving  them  ?  The  third  of  Mr.  Archer's 
statements  seems  to  us,  in  its  value  as  an  argument, 
equal  to  the  other  two.  Morality  is  so  superior,  as  a 
marching  order,  to  religion,  because  it  is  continuously 
verifiable  by  experience.  Well,  we  suppose  experi- 
ences vary.  But  to  some  of  us  at  least,  it  is  precisely 
on  the  ground  of  an  experience  continuously  verified 
that  we  hold  to  religion.     It  is  precisely  because  we 

14 


Life's   Marching  Orders 

have  found  nothing  else  that  is  equal  to  the  strain  oi 
life  and  of  temptation  ;  nothing  else  that  reaches 
where  pubHc  opinion  and  outside  maxims  and  dry 
counsels  of  prudence  cannot  reach,  into  the  hidden 
region  of  motive,  into  the  secret  realm  where  duty 
fights  its  battle  with  desire — it  is  because  of  this 
experience,  daily  tested  and  verified,  that  we  think 
so  little  of  a  morality  that  is  not  backed  up  by  some- 
thing behind  a  morality,  something  that  gives 
morality  its  life  and  conquering  power.  The  New 
Testament  is  the  greatest  book  of  morality,  because 
it  is  the  greatest  book  of  religion.  It  gives  us  a 
supreme  morality,  because  it  gives  us  a  supreme  life. 
It  supplies  so  perfectly  what  Seneca,  in  that  strange 
yearning  sentence  of  his,  describes  as  the  world's 
great  want  :  "  We  ought  to  choose  some  good  man, 
and  always  have  him  before  our  eyes,  that  we  may 
live  as  if  he  watched  us,  and  do  everything  as  if  he 
saw."  Can  we  forget  how  exactly  this  answers  to 
what  Mill,  that  other  seeker,  says  of  Christ  ?  Prosper 
Merimee,  Mill's  contemporary  in  France,  who  called 
himself  a  great  atheist,  "  an  outrageous  materialist," 
has  a  saying  which  might  be  put  beside  Mill's. 
Speaking  of  the  New  Testament,  he  observes  :  "It 
seems  evident  to  me  that  there  is  no  better  rule  ol 
conduct  to  follow,  whatever  doubts  one  may  enter- 
tain as  to  the  origin  of  the  book."  The  New  Testa- 
ment contains  much  that  belongs  to  its  own  time,  a 
time  which  is  gone,  and  whose  conditions  have  been 
outgrown.  We  strip  off  the  peel  to  get  to  the  orange. 
But  beneath  the  temporal  shines  there  the  eternal. 
Here  still  seeking  souls  find  their  marching  orders. 
Here  find  we  life's  highest,  given  us  in  its  highest 
example.     Here  come  we  in  contact  with  spiritual 

15 


Faith's    Certainties 

forces,  whose  power  we  can  test  to-day,  and  whose 
action  upon  us  is  to  translate  the  Christ  Ufe  of  those 
glorious  passages  into  a  Christ  life  written  in  our- 
selves. Here  we  get  our  morality,  with  a  driving 
power  that  makes  it  effective.  Here,  too,  we  get 
what  morality  can  never  give,  the  enthusiasm  for 
living  which  comes  from  an  unquenchable  hope. 

Voltaire  once  described  life  as  "  une  maiivaise 
plaisanterie  "  (a  bad  joke).  It  certainly  will  be  that 
or  worse,  if  we  follow  some  of  the  marching  orders 
which  are  current  to-day.  In  youth's  hot  age  we  are 
apt  to  take  our  orders  from  the  passions.  The 
passions  are  magnificent  in  their  way.  Let  none 
undervalue  or  disparage  them.  Milton,  and  after 
him  Vauvenargues,  has  described  them  as  factors 
of  the  noblest  in  us.  But  always  when  in  their 
proper  place.  They  are  forces  that  must  never  be 
leaders.  They  are  placed  too  low  down  in  us  to  be 
watchtowers.  Their  range  of  vision  is  so  limited, 
and  of  themselves  they  never  see  straight.  Besides, 
they  dry  up  later  on,  and  yet  life  has  still  to  be  lived. 
People  take  orders  from  the  oddest  things.  Of  old 
people  sought  direction  in  omens,  in  signs  and 
oracles,  the  flight  of  birds,  the  entrails  of  slain 
victims.  A  witty  French  lady  writer,  describing  her 
recent  experiences  in  England,  informs  her  readers 
that  amongst  us  young  ladies,  anxious  for  their 
matrimonial  prospects,  seek  guidance  as  to  their 
future  husbands  by  mystical  incantations,  by  weird 
rites  at  Michaelmas  and  New  Year's  Day,  by  chance 
openings  of  the  Bible,  and  so  on.  It  is  news  to  us  ; 
but  she,  perhaps,  knows  her  sex  better  than  we  do. 
There  are  others,  and  these  chiefly  women,  who  take 
their  orders  from  the  priest,   the  confessor.     They 

i6 


Life's   Marching  Orders 

would  save  their  poor  little  souls  by  losing  them — 
the  wrong  way.  They  give  up  their  own  reason, 
their  own  will — the  twin  pillars  of  character — putting 
them  under  the  heel  of  another's  reason,  another's  will. 
As  if  the  creation  of  character — the  one  object  for 
which  we  are  here  in  this  world — were  to  be  obtained 
by  evisceration,  by  annihilation  !  The  priest  feasts 
on  souls,  on  their  emasculation,  their  absorption 
into  himself,  as  the  vulture  feasts  on  carrion.  When 
will  men  learn,  when  will  priests  learn,  that  the 
development  of  a  free,  nobly  thinking,  nobly  willing 
self,  is  the  greatest  of  all  creations  in  this  world,  and 
that  the  man  who  works  against  that,  who  aims  at  its 
destruction,  is  the  most  murderous  of  all  murderers  ? 
We  are  here  to  be  free,  yet  with  an  ordered  free- 
dom, free  in  a  spiritual  universe,  whose  laws — plainly 
discernible  to  all  who  seek — it  will  be  our  delight  to 
obey.     Deo  parere  lihertas  est. 

The  marching  orders  of  that  spiritual  world  are 
often  stern  enough,  as  stern  sometimes,  and  as 
seeming  hopeless,  as  those  for  the  Balaclava  charge, 
or  of  a  forlorn  hope.  In  your  lonehness,  in  your 
weakness,  you  wonder  sometimes  what  you  are  here 
for.  Life  seems  too  cruel.  Its  burdens,  its  dis- 
appointments have  been  so  crushing,  its  conditions  so 
merciless.  Well,  what  are  you  here  for  ?  Plainly, 
it  was  not  simply  for  enjoying  yourself,  forgetting  all 
you  would  like.  Were  that  the  main  object,  things 
would  have  been  differently  arranged.  You  have 
not  had  provision  made  for  all  that.  But  have 
you  observed  what  provision  has  been  made,  a 
provision  that  has  been  always  there  ?  It  is  the 
provision  for  doing  your  duty  ;  the  provision  for 
willing    well,    for    acting    well ;     the    provision    for 

17 


Faith  s   Certainties 

character,  for  nobleness.  There  has  never  been  one 
single  moment,  one  single  condition  of  your  life  in 
which  all  that  has  not  been  made  possible  for  you. 
And  the  greater  the  stress  the  greater  the  chance. 

Here,  again,  let  us  turn  to  our  New  Testament. 
We  get  a  glimpse  there  of  life's  marching  orders  as 
they  were  interpreted  by  one  of  its  chief  characters. 
Have  we  grumblers,  comfortably  housed  meanwhile, 
with  families  and  friends,  with  incomes,  with  all  our 
easy  securities,  ever  tried  to  picture  to  ourselves  the 
actual  state  of  things  which  Paul  describes  as  his  daily 
condition  ?  "  In  journeyings  often,  in  perils  of 
waters,  in  perils  of  robbers,  in  perils  by  mine  own 
countrymen,  in  perils  by  the  heathen  ...  in 
weariness  and  painfulness,  in  watchings  often,  in 
hunger  and  thirst,  in  fastings  often,  in  cold  and 
nakedness  !  "  And  this  career  winds  up  in  the 
Roman  prison,  and  then,  if  report  speaks  truly,  as 
one  of  Nero's  victims,  going  out  as  one  of  those 
human  flambeaux  set  alight  to  illuminate  his  gardens. 
Plainly  not  much  provision  for  the  human  comforts 
here  !  And  yet  the  man  was  content  and  joyful.  He 
was  a  soldier  on  the  march,  God's  soldier,  with  God's 
orders  in  his  mind,  and  God's  comfort  in  his  soul. 
And  these  are  the  marching  orders  for  you  and  for  me. 
They  have  been  good  enough  for  millions  of  souls,  who 
have  been  happy  in  the  possession  of  them  ;  happy, 
not  from  fancy  conjunctions  of  prosperous  circum- 
stances, but  because  they  felt  themselves  to  be  here 
to  become  what  God  would  have  them  be,  and  to 
accomplish  what  God  would  have  them  do. 


i8 


II 

THE  NEW  GENERATION 

The  parent  is  your  true  revolutionist.  The 
family  man — that  quiet,  easy,  domesticated  person- 
age— is  really  a  greater  upheaver  than  a  case  of 
dynamite.  To  bring  forth  children  is  to  invite  the 
whirlwind.  It  is  to  invoke  the  strongest,  the  most 
fateful  force  we  know.  The  oldest  institutions, 
your  Church  and  State,  your  hoary  creeds,  your 
settled  code  of  ethics,  are  powerless  against  the  cradle. 
You  settle  your  constitution,  you  endow  and 
establish  your  theology,  and  fancy  you  have  arranged 
things  for  all  time.  And  the  tiny  brain  that  yonder  is 
making  its  first  attempts  at  thought  may  upset  them 
all.  In  the  year  1760  there  was  in  France  a  going 
concern  in  Church  and  State — kinghood,  priesthood, 
feudalhood,  serfhood — that  had  been  established  for 
centuries.  About  that  time  some  children  were 
coming  into  the  world — a  Mirabeau,  a  Robespierre,  a 
Danton,  a  Vergniaud ;  and  their  advent  was  the 
finger  of  doom  pointed  at  all  that.  There  has  been 
from  the  beginning  a  curious  mistrust  of  the  new 
generation.  The  grown-up  people  know  themselves, 
and  think  they  know  their  world.  But  what  of  their 
successors  ?  Will  they  take  the  world  as  the  others 
take  it  ?  Old  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  in  the  "  Religio 
Medici,"  recoiled  from  the  future.  He  had  no 
pleasure  in  thinking  of  what  men  would  be  or  do  two 

19 


Faith's  Certainties 

or  three  centuries  hence.      Before  him  Horace  had 

put  this  still  more  strongly.     The  world  would  go 

from  bad  to  worse  : — 

^tas  parentum  pejor  avis  tulit 
Nos  nequiores,  mox  daturos 
Progeniem  vitiosiorem. 

(The  age  of  our  parents,  worse  than  that  of  its 
ancestors,  has  borne  us,  worse  still,  who  in  our 
turn  are  to  produce  a  progeny  yet  deeper  in  vice.) 

The  most  epigrammatic  bit  of  condensed  pessimism 
this,  surely,  that  literature  has  ever  produced. 
Things  were  indeed  pretty  bad  in  the  time  of  the 
Roman  poet,  and  they  got  worse. 

This  question  of  the  next  generation,  the  question 
of  how  to  deal  with  this  unknown  power,  how  to  curb 
and  train  its  energies,  and  to  turn  them  to  the  best 
uses,  was  one  that  profoundly  exercised  the  ancient 
world.  And  its  thoughts  here  were  by  no  means 
always  pessimistic.  The  Greek  brain  was  especially 
full  of  bold  schemes.  Our  modern  science  of 
Eugenics  is  really  a  very  ancient  one.  Plato,  in  his 
"  Republic,"  has  anticipated  almost  all  that  has  been 
said.  He  proposes  to  breed  men  as  we  breed  horses — 
on  scientific  principles.  It  is  to  be  by  a  principle  of 
selection.  In  his  ideal  community  he  fixes  the  age 
at  which  men  and  women  are  to  produce  children. 
Women  are  to  begin  to  bear  children  at  twenty,  and 
to  continue  till  forty  ;  men  to  begin  as  fathers  at 
twenty-five,  and  to  continue  till  fifty-five.  It  is 
throughout  a  State  affair.  And  the  education  of  the 
children  is  also  a  State  affair.  The  whole  training 
and  preparation  for  life  is  laid  down  in  rigid  rules, 
framed  in  the  interests  of  the  community.  That  idea 
has  been  floating  before  the  world  ever  since.     But  it 

20 


The  New  Generation 

has  never  been  carried  out.  The  Emperor  GalHenus, 
under  the  influence  of  Plotinus,  proposed  once  to 
rebuild  a  Campanian  city,  call  it  Platonopolis,  and 
to  have  it  administered  on  the  principles  of  the 
"  Republic."  It  would  have  been  a  vastly  interest- 
ing experiment  for  the  world  had  the  scheme  matured, 
which  it  did  not.  Humanity  is  a  very  queer  material, 
and  has  shown,  so  far,  a  decided  objection  to  be  cut 
and  carved  as  though  it  were  a  piece  of  mahogany. 
Spite  of  all  the  schemes,  it  has  gone  on  in  its  own 
weird  way,  falling  in  love,  marrying,  or  doing  without 
marrying,  producing  children,  the  results  of  passion, 
of  affection,  of  wild  impulse,  and  then  standing  by, 
wondering,  admiring,  or  aghast  at  the  new  creation, 
and  asking,  often  in  sore  bewilderment,  what  is  to  be 
done  with  it  ! 

So,  after  all  these  ages,  we  have  the  question  still 
before  us,  still  an  unsettled  question,  what  to  do  with 
the  new  generation.  We  are,  on  a  multitude  of  its 
issues,  very  much  at  sea  ;  but  there  are  one  or  two 
simple  and  yet  fundamental  matters  on  which  there 
is,  amongst  thinking  men,  a  general  agreement.  The 
difficulty  is  that,  so  far,  the  agreement  is  only  a 
mental  one  ;  and  the  thinkers  will  have  to  be  a  good 
deal  more  energetic  than  they  have  been  if  these 
fundamentals  are  ever  to  be  made  a  basis  of  action. 
We  are,  let  us  hope,  at  one  with  Plato  that  the  State, 
as  such,  has  an  interest  in  the  question  ;  an  interest 
which  must  govern  much  of  its  future  procedure.  It 
is,  for  instance,  imperative  to  its  well-being  that  its 
children  should  be  born  and  brought  up  in  healthy 
conditions.  But  what  a  proposition  that  is  !  With 
over  seventy  per  cent,  of  its  newcomers  born  here  in 
England  in  big  towns,  where  the  air,  our   greatest 

21 


Faith's  Certainties 

food,  is  often  fifty  per  cent,  under  the  health  line  ; 
born  in  homes  where  neither  good  food  nor  good 
clothing  is  possible  on  the  wages  earned  ;  born  often 
in  slums  where  the  moral  air  and  light  are  as  dense 
and  befogged  as  the  physical  !  The  question  here  is 
not  of  giving  men  luxuries,  but  of  giving  them  bodies, 
brains  and  hearts.  It  is  not  a  question  of  poverty 
even.  Some  of  the  best  have  been  born  poor. 
Luther  was  of  peasant  origin.  "  I  am  a  peasant's 
son,"  said  he  ;  "  my  father,  grandfather  and  ancestors 
were  peasants."  But  it  was  a  peasantry  of  good 
air  and  wholesome  surroundings.  Do  we  expect  a 
slum  ever  to  produce  a  prophet,  a  Luther  ?  Are  we 
not,  in  our  present  conditions  in  England,  behind  the 
barbarian  races,  who,  at  least,  breed  strong  men  ? 
Thucydides  said  of  Attica  that  it  was  famous  for 
breeding  men.  So  far,  it  has  been  about  the  last 
thing  we  have  thought  of. 

The  State  has  to  wake  up  on  this  subject.  Well  for 
it  if  its  politics  shape  more  definitely  and  with  more 
concentration  upon  it.  It  can  do  great  things.  But 
it  can  never  of  itself  solve,  or  half  solve,  the  problem. 
The  biggest  half  is  left  for  us,  the  individuals,  who 
separately  compose  it.  Not  that  we  can  go  all  the 
way,  or  even  very  far,  towards  its  solution.  The 
problem  of  heredity  is  a  baffling  one,  beyond  all  our 
science  and  all  our  experience.  Parents  stand  often 
amazed  at  their  children.  We  see  family  after 
family  that  bear  apparently  no  resemblance  to  their 
begetters.  All  the  characteristics  of  their  elders 
absent,  and  these  strange  new  ones  in  possession  ! 
Germanicus  has  a  Caligula  for  his  heir  ;  John 
Howard's  son  is  a  rake.  For  all  that  there  are  lines 
of  movement,  waymarks  which  these  cross  traces  do 

22 


The  New  Generation 

hot  obliterate.  Blood  tells  ;  and  so  still  more  does 
training.  A  Spurgeon,  a  Wesley,  do  not  come  by 
chance  ;  no,  nor  a  Kaiser  Wilhelm  nor  a  Bach.  You 
go  back  for  a  generation,  or  two  generations,  and  see 
them  in  the  making.  Above  all,  you  go  back  upon 
their  mothers.  Woman  is  to-day  trying  to  get  a 
fresh  footing  in  the  world.  She  is  agitating  for  the 
vote,  and  doubtless  in  due  time  she  will  get  it.  Odd 
though,  that  having  done  comfortably  without  it  for 
all  these  thousands  of  years  she  should  want  to  pull 
the  world  about  our  ears  if  she  does  not  secure  it 
within  six  months.  Let  us  hope,  when  it  does  come, 
it  may  help  in  the  human  struggle ;  but  assuredly 
woman's  best  power  does  not  lie  there.  Some  of  us 
who  have  votes  care  marvellously  little  for  them. 
We  know  better  where  our  true  strength  lies. 
Ballot-boxes  are  something,  but  the  influence  behind 
which  fills  ballot-boxes  is  something  more. 

Woman,  if  she  will  see  it,  has  had,  and  may  have 
still  more,  an  influence  that  will  fill  not  only  ballot 
boxes,  but  all  the  great  spheres  of  life,  and  that 
with  the  finest  forms  of  power.  It  is  with  her,  for 
one  thing,  to  preserve  religion  for  the  future ;  to 
preserve  it  by  making  it  beautiful  and  by  making 
it  lovable.  The  creeds  are  man's  affair,  and  they 
are  hardly  a  compliment  to  him.  They  have  done 
so  much  to  make  religion  forbidding,  to  make  it 
ugly.  It  is  not  in  them  that  men  have  reached 
their  faith.  They  got  it  better  at  their  mother's 
knee.  To  understand  Wesley,  you  have  first  to 
understand  his  mother.  Bernard's  hfe  is  written 
first  of  all  in  the  life  of  Aletta.  Augustine  derives 
from  Monica.  Nothing  in  modern  literature  is  more 
beautiful  than  Lamartine's  account  of  his  mother. 

23 


Faith's   Certainties 

He  tells  how  in  the  garden  of  their  country  house 
there  was  a  walk  sacred  to  her,  where,  at  a  given 
hour  every  evening,  she  walked,  in  rapt  communion 
with  her  God,  and  getting  from  that  fellowship  a 
light,  a  love,  a  devotion  which  made  her  to  him  and 
all  who  knew  her  an  incarnation  of  all  that  was 
beautiful  and  holy.  What  a  new  generation  should 
we  have  if  behind  it  stood  mothers  of  that  type  ! 

We  are  trying  to-day  to  educate  our  new 
generation.  And  what  is  education  ?  Assuredly 
not  the  mere  stuffing  of  young  brains  with  the  rules 
of  syntax  or  the  names  of  dead  kings.  It  is  nothing 
if  it  is  not,  as  far  as  that  can  be  done,  the  creation 
of  character.  Says  old  Heraclitus  :  ^)do<s  dvOpunro) 
SaifjLbiv  (Character  is  man's  destiny) — a  true  word. 
And  character  can  only  be  created  in  others  by 
the^^exhibition  of  it  in  ourselves.  You  can  only 
teach  religion  by  being  religious  ;  and  by  being  so 
in  a  beautiful  way.  The  only  way  of  making  creed 
effective  is  by  acting  it.  Make  young  people  fall  in 
love  with  their  teacher ;  that  is  the  surest  way  of 
making  them  love  the  things  he  teaches.  And  that 
is  true  whether  the  teacher  be  a  mother  at  home, 
or  the  leader  of  a  class  in  day  or  Sunday  school,  or 
the  professor  at  a  University.  What  were  the  Rugby, 
the  Uppingham  school-books  compared  with  the 
personality  of  an  Arnold,  a  Thring  ?  What  were 
the  Balliol  traditions  compared  with  the  influence 
of  a  Jowett  ?  What  a  story  is  that  of  Da  Feltre 
of  Mantua  in  the  fifteenth  century  !  Villari  says 
of  him  :  "  His  success  in  so  immoral  an  age  was 
entirely  owing  to  the  nobility  and  generosity  of  his 
mind.  .  .  .  For  a  long  time  his  pupils  were 
distinguished  by   a  loyalty  of  character  in  strong 

24 


The   New  Generation 

contrast  with  the  general  corruption."  He  beUeved 
evidently  in  Joubert's  maxim  :  "  Make  truth  lovely 
and  do  not  try  to  arm  her  ;  mankind  will  then  be 
far  less  inclined  to  contend  with  her." 

One  of  the  greatest  problems  of  education  is  the 
problem  of  work.  A  fondness  for  work,  the  habit 
of  it,  the  discipline  of  the  mind  to  the  encounter  of 
difficulties,  to  perseverance  in  the  attack  till  the 
victory  has  been  gained ;  this  is  one  of  the  funda- 
mentals of  character,  the  sign  manual  of  a  superior 
race.  To  get  that  into  a  pupil  is  the  teacher's 
greatest  and  most  difficult  task.  Montesquieu 
speaks  of  a  traveller  who  found  as  the  result  of  his 
observations  that  among  all  the  tribes  of  men  there 
seemed  a  general  disposition  to  laziness.  It  is  a 
disposition  that  has  not  died  out.  The  new  gener- 
ation in  particular  is  strongly  suspected  of  laziness. 
Dean  Farrar,  as  an  old  schoolmaster,  gives  an  appal- 
ling account  of  our  public  schools.  Of  the  twenty- 
five  per  cent,  of  the  boys — supposedly  the  elite — who 
go  to  the  university  he  says  :  "A  considerable 
number  leave  school  ignorant  of  history,  ancient  and 
modern,  ignorant  of  geography  and  chronology, 
ignorant  of  every  single  modern  language,  ignorant 
of  their  own  language,  and  often  of  its  mere  spelling  ; 
ignorant  of  every  single  science  .  .  .  profoundly 
ignorant  of  that  Greek  and  Latin  to  which  long  m- 
effectual  years  of  their  aimless  teaching  have  been 
professedly  devoted."  We  do  not  know  how  far 
this  holds  of  to-day.  The  fact  remains,  however, 
that  English  ignorance  is  still  a  proverb  in  better 
educated  countries  ;  and  this  further  fatal  fact  that 
industry  is  considered  bad  form  in  the  youth  of  our 
upper  classes  ;    that  a  proficiency  in  games  counts 

25 


Faith  s   Certainties 

vastly  more  with  them  than  a  proficiency  in 
language  or  in  science.  Are  things  better  lower 
down  ?  How  is  it  that  the  English  clerk,  so  unlike 
the  German,  knows  no  language  but  his  own  ;  that 
the  working  man  spends  so  many  hours  and  so  much 
money  at  football,  and  nothing  of  one  or  the  other 
over  books  ? 

How  is  this  to  be  met ;  how  is  the  new  generation 
to  be  taught  the  value  of  work,  to  be  infected  with 
the  love  of  it  ?  There  have  been,  at  one  time  and 
another,  odd  theories  abroad  on  this  subject.  Our 
English  Locke,  who  in  this  was  followed  by  Rousseau, 
and  later  by  Basedow,  has  the  brilliant  idea  of 
confounding  for  the  child  the  difference  between 
play  and  work.  Make  a  child,  suggests  Locke,  whip 
his  top  till  he  is  tired  and  sick  of  it,  and  then  give  him 
some  real  work  as  a  recreation  !  It  is  like  the  story  of 
the  builder  saying  to  his  labourers  :  "  Let  us  now 
have  a  game  at  digging  out  the  cellars  !  "  The 
theory  has  been  quite  elaborated  in  some  modern 
systems.  We  have  no  belief  in  it.  It  is  a  dishonesty, 
and  one  which  in  the  end  will  be  found  out.  There 
is  all  the  difference  in  the  world  between  play  and 
work,  and  it  is  a  crime  against  the  young  mind  to 
conceal  the  fact. 

At  the  other  extreme  are  people  who  preach  the 
austere  doctrine  of  work  for  work's  sake ;  who 
would  banish  the  system  of  prizes,  of  rewards,  as 
encouraging  the  spirit  of  emulation,  as  an  appeal  to 
an  inferior  motive.  Say  they  :  "  Make  work  its  own 
reward ;  create  in  the  learner  the  love  of  the  great 
literatures,  of  the  great  sciences,  for  what  they  con- 
tain in  themselves."  The  other  way,  that  of 
examinations,  prizes,  and  so  forth,  results  in  a  mere 

26 


The   New  Generation 

cramming,  which  is  cast  aside  and  forgotten  as  soon 
as  this  immediate  end  has  been  attained.  We  hear 
of  some  Council  school  authorities  who  have  been 
following  this  advice,  though  with  another  motive. 
They  have  abolished  the  system  of  prizes  in  the 
schools  as  a  useless  cost  to  the  ratepayer  !  The 
scholars  are  henceforth  to  nourish  their  ardour  on 
the  text,  **  Virtue  is  its  own  reward  "  !  Surely  this 
is  playing  it  rather  low  down  on  the  young  gener- 
ation !  It  is  expecting  too  much  of  the  average 
human  nature,  especially  of  young  human  nature. 
It  is  to  forget  one  chief  thing  here.  The  love  of 
knowledge  for  its  own  sake  is  one  of  the  mind's  later 
achievements.  Moreover,  it  is  one  that  comes  to 
us  when  the  hard  beginnings  are  over  ;  when  we  have 
already  penetrated  the  first  barriers  and  got  into  the 
thing  itself.  You  may  enjoy  the  Greek  dramatists 
for  themselves  when  you  can  read  them  with  your  feet 
on  the  fender.  That  is  a  different  one  from  conju- 
gating the  verbs  in  "  mi  "  !  The  intellectual  elite, 
the  true  students,  come  surely  to  the  disinterested 
love  of  the  thing  they  study  ;  but  none  of  us  begins 
there.     The  boy  has  not  the  stimulant  of  the  man. 

But  the  man  himself,  at  his  best  and  highest, 
does  he  do  entirely  without  his  reward  ?  Does  the 
statesman,  the  scientist,  the  preacher,  work  with  no 
thought  of  the  guerdon  ?  If  he  is  of  the  true  metal  he 
will  keep  raising  his  price  ;  working  for  ever  nobler 
ends,  for  the  reward  which  is  spiritual.  But  he  is 
helped  every  day  by  the  other ;  by  recognition,  by 
the  approbation  of  the  worthy.  The  Greeks,  who 
knew  something  of  education,  frankly  accepted  the 
reward  system.  The  Olympian  games,  with  their 
prizes,  garlands,  statues,  were  their  great  incitement 

27 


Faith^s   Certainties 

to  the  athletic  training  of  their  young  men.  And  not 
for  athletics  alone.  It  was  to  Olympia  the  poets, 
the  dramatists,  brought  their  highest  intellectual 
achievements  for  the  verdict  of  the  people.  We  read 
how  Herodotus,  "  the  father  of  history,"  wrote  his 
history  of  the  war  with  Persia  to  be  recited  at  the 
games.  We  read  how,  as  he  read  to  the  assembled 
thousands,  the  story  of  Thermopylae,  of  Marathon 
and  Salamis,  the  multitude,  moved  to  its  inmost  soul, 
rent  the  air  with  their  applause,  and  then  crowned 
and  magnificently  rewarded  the  narrator. 

We  need  to  get  our  new  generation  to  work.  And 
we  must  set  it  to  work  with  a  good  heart.  Let 
the  boy  have  his  prizes.  It  is  one  of  the  purest  joys 
in  many  a  humble  home  when  the  lad,  the  girl, 
bring  home  the  treasured  volumes  in  their  gay 
bindings  to  adorn  the  little  bookshelf  ;  there  to  be, 
not  their  own  only,  but  their  father's,  their  mother's 
pride.  They  will  have  bigger  tasks  later  on,  and  win, 
let  us  hope,  bigger  victories.  But  they  cannot  learn, 
too  soon,  the  habit  of  struggle,  the  habit  of  victory. 

On  the  whole,  we  believe  in  the  new  generation. 
The  faith  by  which  we  live  is  a  faith  in  God ;  and 
that  must  have,  as  its  corollary,  a  faith  in  man.  And 
such  faith,  all  seeming  appearances  to  the  contrary, 
is  justified  by  the  steady  march  of  human  pro- 
gress. The  world  shows  that  it  is  not  going  to 
lose  any  of  the  good  that  has  come  into  it.  It  may 
change  the  form  and  aspect  of  it,  but  it  will  keep  the 
thing.  The  laws  of  the  soul  have  all  a  forward, 
upward  look.  We  believe  with  the  Anabaptist 
Hiibmaier,  who  perished  for  his  faith  :  "  Truth  is 
immortal ;  and  though  she  for  a  long  time  may  be 
imprisoned,  scourged,  crowned  with  thorns,  crucified 

28 


The   New   Generation 

and  buried,  she  will  yet  rise  victorious  on  the  third 
day."  Because  we  are  in  higher  hands  than  our 
own,  in  the  hands  of  One  whose  pauses  are  prepar- 
ations for  great  things,  who  wills  our  final  partici- 
pation in  His  own  perfectness,  we  hail  the  future  with 
gladness  and  hope.  In  that  spirit,  tOo,  we  hail  the 
beginners — now  in  their  cradles — of  the  new  future. 
We  say  with  Wordsworth  : — 

A  child  more  than  all  other  gifts 

That  earth  can  offer  to  declining  man 

Brings  hope  with  it,  and  forward  looking  thoughts. 


29 


Ill 

THE  GREAT  FINDINGS 

Man  is  the  eternal  seeker.  Life  might  be  defined 
as  a  perpetual  quest.  We  are  always  in  search  of 
something  ;  and  the  more  we  find,  the  more  ardently 
do  we  seek.  We  begin  early.  Hide-and-seek  is  the 
children's  greatest  game.  There  is  nothing  so 
delightful  to  young  people  as  a  secret,  except  that 
perhaps  of  finding  one  out.  It  is  this  feeling  for 
secrets  and  for  unravelling  them  that  makes  the 
enormous  vogue  of  detective  stories.  The  prospector 
in  the  wilds  of  Alaska,  in  the  Californian  sierras, 
turning  up  the  soil  in  the  hunt  for  gold,  is  the  image 
of  us  all.  The  world  is,  for  every  man  in  it,  a  Tom 
Tiddler's  ground,  which  he  scratches  and  rakes  for 
hid  treasure.  And  what  extraordinary  finds  there 
have  been  !  Some  of  them  of  such  pure  luck.  Was 
there  ever  anything  queerer  in  this  line  than  the 
discovery  of  glass  ?  We  wonder  now  how  the  world 
could  ever  have  got  on  without  glass.  How  did  we 
get  it  ?  Not  by  chemical  research,  not  by  elaborate 
scientific  experiment,  but  by  the  sheer  blundering 
fortune  of  certain  wandering  b'^ilors.  Some  Phoenician 
mariners,  landing  on  the  nort.^  coast  of  Africa,  find 
themselves  in  the  midst  of  a  s  vndy  desert.  They 
search  for  stones  on  which  to  place  their  kettles  and 
pans  for  cooking.  Finding  none,  they  bethink 
them  of  some  lumps  of  saltpetre  which  form  part  of 
their  cargo.     They  bring  these  along,    make  a  fire 

30 


The   Great  Findings 

on  them,  and  cook  and  eat  their  simple  meal.  And 
then  the  wonder  !  They  find  the  saltpetre  melted 
by  the  fire,  has  become  mixed  with  the  ashes  and  the 
glowing  sand.  As  the  liquid  mass  cools,  it  becomes 
before  their  eyes  a  clear,  hard,  transparent  substance. 
Man  has  discovered  glass  ! 

That  is  a  happening  of  once  in  a  million  years.  We 
rarely  get  our  finds  so  easily  as  that.  It  is  not 
nature's  habit  to  give  something  for  nothing.  What 
seem  accidental  finds  are  only  a  small  part  accidental. 
Mme.  Curie  struck  radium  when  looking  for  some- 
thing else  ;  but  an  untrained  mind  would  not  have 
struck  it  at  all.  Newton  reached  gravitation  from 
the  fall  of  an  apple  ;  Watt  hit  on  steam  as  a  propelling 
force  from  the  simmering  of  a  tea-kettle.  But 
apples  had  been  falling  from  trees,  and  kettles  had 
been  simmering  over  kitchen  fires  long  ages  before, 
and  nobody  had  extracted  from  them  either  gravi- 
tation or  steam  engines.  Nature's  secrets  are,  as 
a  rule,  hardly  won ;  she  demands  the  best  and 
strongest  in  us  before  she  will  yield  them.  To-day 
Mont  Blanc  is  an  affair  of  excursion  parties  ;  but  it 
took  the  trained  muscle,  the  mountaineering  instinct, 
the  quenchless  valour  of  a  Balmat  to  find  the  road. 
We  sit  down  at  our  tables,  and  partake  of  every  eat- 
able variety.  Has  it  ever  occurred  to  us  to  think  of 
the  sufferings,  the  deaths  innumerable,  of  those 
human  pioneers  who  first  found  out  what  was  good  to 
eat  and  drink  ;  so  often  by  eating  and  drinking  the 
wrong  things  and  getting  poisoned  by  them  ?  There 
ought  to  be  a  monument  to  the  man  who  swallowed 
the  first  oyster.  We  all  honour  Columbus ;  but 
what  of  the  man  who,  fashioning  some  queer  craft, 
trusted  himself  first  to  the  remorseless  sea  ?     We 

31 


Faith  s    Certainties 

are  all  on  wheels  to-day ;  the  wheel  is  a  bigger 
element  in  life  than  anything  that  all  the  parliaments 
have  ever  enacted.  But  who  invented  the  wheel  ? 
And  who  kindled  the  first  fire  ? 

These  were  findings  in  the  business  of  living  ;  and, 
as  someone  has  said,  we  must  live  before  we  can  live 
well.  There  are  doubtless  wonderful  things  yet  to 
be  discovered  in  this  direction.  There  are  perhaps 
new  sauces  to  be  invented,  and  better  soaps.  We 
may  learn  to  travel  fifty  times  faster  than  we  do 
now.  And  we  may  find  out  how  to  live  to  a  hundred 
and  fifty ;  to  become  taller  and  stronger.  One 
doubts,  however,  whether  improvements,  however 
vast,  in  this  line  of  things  will  add  much  to  the  sum 
of  real  living.  Of  what  use  after  all,  to  go  quicker 
on  land  or  through  the  air  if  our  traveller  is  miserable, 
or  a  fool,  or  a  knave,  both  when  he  starts  and  when 
he  gets  there  ?  Of  what  ultimate  value  is  the  swiftest 
flashing  of  news  from  the  ends  of  the  earth  if  the 
news  is  that  of  greedy  schemes,  of  base  intrigues, 
of  human  littleness,  crimes  and  follies  ?  The  great 
finds,  after  all,  lie  elsewhere.  They  are  the  soul's 
finds.  And  we  must  each  make  them  for  ourselves. 
The  question  for  you  and  me  is,  What  have  we  found 
or  what  are  we  on  the  way  to  find  ?  We  were  all 
set  going,  years  ago,  on  the  to  us  untrodden  tract 
so  vast  and  varied,  so  full  of  dangers  and  yet  of 
glorious  possibilities — that  great  country  of  free-will, 
where  we  were  turned  adrift  to  seek  a  character  ! 
How  have  we  fared  ?  Have  we  found  anything 
worth  picking  up,  worth  talking  about  ?  The 
chapter  of  our  separate  experience,  if  it  could  only 
be  accurately  and  honestly  told,  what  reading  would 
be  more  fascinating  than  this  ? 

32 


The   Great  Findings 

As  we  count  over  our  findings,  one  thing  is 
remarkable.  It  is  astonishing  how  few  of  them — 
we  are  speaking  here  of  ourselves,  of  the  modern  man 
and  woman — could  be  fitted  into  the  phraseology  of 
the  old  theological  creeds  !  To  do  that  would  be  to 
drop  out  of  reality  into  convention.  We  should 
miss  the  actual  flavour  of  life  as  we  have  lived 
it.  So  much  there  has  been  in  us  that  is  not  in  them  ; 
so  much  in  them  that  is  not  in  us  !  To  take  one  or 
two  of  the  great  finds.  And  these  shall  not  be 
abnormal,  belonging  just  to  an  individual  and  to  no 
one  else  ;  but  such  as  are  open  to  us  all,  examples  and 
lessons  dug  out  of  the  great  laws  of  life.  Have  we 
lived  long  enough  to  find  this  out,  for  instance,  that 
happiness  lies  not  in  possession,  but  in  work  and  the 
rewards  of  work  ?  Do  you  suppose  that  a  rich  man 
is  made  happy  by  his  mere  riches  ?  Nature  has  made 
no  such  contract  with  us  ;  has  never  kept  any  such 
contract,  as  every  rich  man  knows.  A  man  who 
has  waked  up  every  morning  for  years  to  the  know- 
ledge that  he  is  worth  half  a  million,  does  not  get  any 
leap  of  morning  joy  from  that  knowledge.  Not  a 
whit.  It  is  to  him  an  entirely  stale  thought.  If  he 
lost  it  all,  he  would  feel  that,  and  badly.  But  that 
is  another  affair.  The  mere  having,  and  the  sense  of 
having,  is  a  pleasure  he  exhausted  before  he  can 
even  remember.  It  gives  him  no  more  emotion  than 
eating  his  breakfast.  If  he  is  bent  on  money  as  his 
life  pursuit,  the  enjoyment  is  not  in  having,  but  in 
making  it ;  in  seeing  the  pile  increase.  But  that  is  an 
activity  ;  not  the  static  of  the  pile  itself.  To  have 
your  brain,  your  work,  your  business  in  this  world ; 
what  matters  it  whether  their  operations  be  carried 
on  in  a  big  room  or  a  small  one ;    in  a  palace  or  a 

33 

9 


Faith's   Certainties 

cottage  !  Your  soul  is  of  the  same  size  wherever 
it  is  ;  its  dimensions,  its  activities,  its  triumphs  and 
defeats  have  Uttle  or  nothing  to  do  with  those  outside 
fittings  and  furnishings.  The  New  Testament,  in  its 
estimate  of  mere  worldly  possessions,  is  not  talking 
mere  conventional  theology.  It  is  transcribing  a 
page  out  of  the  law  of  hfe.  The  old  Greeks  had  found 
that  law.  We  like  the  story  of  Euripides  and  his 
audience.  In  one  of  his  plays  he  made  one  of  his 
characters  say  :  "  Riches  are  the  sovereign  good ; 
it  is  right  they  should  excite  the  admiration  of  men 
and  of  gods."  The  audience,  we  read,  was  revolted, 
and  would  have  stopped  the  play  had  not  the  poet 
announced  that,  in  the  end,  the  advocates  of  riches 
would  be  punished  ! 

And  connected  with  this  find — of  what  work  means 
to  life — is  another,  which  we  cannot  come  upon  too 
early  ;  and  that  is  the  value  to  us  of  difficulty.  We 
shall  be  good  for  nothing  unless  we  set  ourselves  in 
contact  with  difficult  things,  things  which  bring  out 
all  our  forces,  all  our  reserves.  If  you  have  none  in 
your  own  line  of  things,  for  God's  sake  seek  them,  and 
seek  them  every  day.  The  man  who  has  none  in  his 
daily  programme  is  a  lost  man.  His  manhood 
can  be  seen  ebbing  out  of  him.  All  greatness  is  built 
on  difficulty,  daily  encountered,  daily  conquered. 
Or  even  if  not  conquered,  even  if  we  are  beaten,  the 
value  of  the  struggle  remains.  Failure  is  a  magni- 
ficent hunting  ground.  If  only  it  has  taught  us  our 
limitations,  that  is  something  well  learned.  But  so 
often  it  shows  us,  as  with  the  flash  of  a  searchhght, 
where  our  mistake  lay,  and  how,  after,  to  avoid  it. 
The  great  men,  we  say,  are  all  built  on  difficulties. 
When  you  see  a  great  musician,  a  great  painter,  a  great 

34 


The   Great   Findings 

scientist,  you  see  there  a  soul  that  has  wrestled  with 
ease  and  indolence,  and  has  thrown  them  ;  that  has 
gone  daily  for  the  hard  things,  and  would  have 
speech  with  nothing  easier  than  that ;  one  who  has 
wedded  his  will  to  his  hours,  and  made  them  yield 
their  utmost. 

We  should  think  more  hopefully  of  England's  future 
if  we  could  see  our  Englishmen  of  to-day  more  in  love 
with  difficult  things.  Our  workmen,  so  called,  are 
getting  more  and  more  leisure,  but  what  are  they 
doing  with  it  ?  Who  of  them,  for  instance,  ever 
dreams  of  turning  his  free  hours,  as  the  German  so 
constantly  does,  to  the  tackling  of  a  foreign  language  ? 
If  he  would  only  try  it  he  would  find  a  good  foreign 
grammar  the  most  interesting  book  in  the  world. 
For  one  thing — and  just  think  of  that — it  is  all  true. 
It  will  never  grow  out  of  date  for  you,  and  will  never 
deceive  you.  Come  to  it  when  and  where  you  will, 
and  it  has  always  the  right,  the  accurate  thing  to  say 
on  the  point  you  are  seeking.  Of  how  many  books, 
ancient  and  modern,  can  you  say  as  much  ?  And  as 
you  grapple  with  your  difficulty — in  languages  or 
any  other  research — you  discover  how  all  your  nature 
joins  joyfully  in.  What  puzzled  you  yesterday 
comes  easier  to-day.  How  is  that?  Because  the 
unconscious  part  of  you,  the  forces  that  lie  beneath 
your  active  will  and  consciousness,  have  come  to  your 
aid  and  have  been  working  for  you.  They  approve 
what  you  are  doing  and  set  their  seal  upon  the  work. 
And  if  even  in  the  end  you  are  not  a  success  you  are  at 
least  a  tryer,  and  that  is  a  success  in  itself. 

Intimately  Hnked  with  that  great  find  is  this 
other  ;  that  as  a  tryer  you  find  yourself.  You  find 
not  only  work,  but  your  work ;    your  message  to 

35 


Faith's   Certainties 

and  business  in  this  world.  We  are  all  preachers — 
of  something  or  other  ;  all  of  us  are  speakers,  in 
public  or  in  private  ;  and  some  of  us  are  writers. 
And  we  have  all  our  style.  How  did  we  get  it  ? 
There  are  innumerable  books  on  style,  which  some  of 
us  have  labouriously  perused.  We  have,  if  we  are 
ambitious,  studied  Quintilian  and  Aristotle ;  we 
have  sought  the  secrets  of  Cicero's  flow,  of  the  com- 
pression of  Tacitus ;  we  know  our  Addison,  our 
Burke,  our  Macaulay  ;  we  have  sought  the  phrasing, 
the  epigrammatic  sparkle,  of  France,  from  Bossuet 
to  Renan.  You  may  do  this  and  make  a  pretty 
jumble  of  it  in  the  end.  It  has  its  uses,  all  that,  for 
no  honest  work  is  useless.  But  it  will  be  all  a  wander- 
ing in  the  wilderness  unless,  by  God's  mercy,  this 
happens — that  ultimately  you  find  yourself.  Find, 
that  is,  your  own  soul  and  its  meaning  for  this  world 
and  its  message  to  it.  When  you  have  got  your 
message  you  have  got  your  style.  For,  as  Buffon 
has  it,  and  it  is  the  final  word  here,  "  Le  style,  c'est 
Vhomme  meme  "  (style  is  the  man  himself).  When 
you  have,  not  to  say  something,  but  something 
to  say ;  when  God's  word  to  you  has  become  a 
word  in  you,  a  word  that  burns  to  be  uttered,  there  is 
no  more  trouble  about  style.  It  will  come  out  of 
you,  just  as  your  breath  comes  out  of  you,  as  an 
emanation  of  your  very  self.  And  men  will  taste  it 
and  savour  it ;  for  it  is  no  longer  the  chopped  straw 
of  dead  material,  but  a  bit  of  actual  life.  When  a 
man  has  found  himself  his  fellows  speedily  find  him. 
For  a  part  of  the  universe  has  taken  root  in  him  and 
is  expressing  itself  through  him.  It  has  entered  into 
him  as  deep  conviction,  as  passionate  enthusiasm. 
Here  is  a  ray  of  the  eternal  light,  reflected  through  the 

36 


The   Great   Findings 

medium  of  this  one  soul,  whose  separate  angle  of 
reflection  returns  this  unique  ray,  needed  to  make  the 
human  vision  of  God  complete.  And  this  message, 
remember,  is  not  that  only  of  the  professional 
speaker  or  writer.  You  may  never  stand  on  platform, 
or  say  a  word  in  print.  Not  the  less  you  have  your 
message,  if  you  will  seek  it ;  the  gesture  of  your  own 
spirit,  seen  in  the  temper  of  your  mind,  in  your  whole 
attitude  to  life — a  beautiful,  a  significant  message,  if 
only  we  will  seek  it  and  find  it. 

Assuredly  everything  in  life  hangs  upon  the 
same  string.  What  we  have  said  as  to  these  great 
findings  forms  part  of  this  other,  the  greatest  find 
oi  all — to  have  discovered  and  to  have  appropriated 
life's  spiritual  values.  We  are  reminded  here  of 
an  extraordinary  saying  of  Lamennais,  a  saying 
assuredly  out  of  his  dark  hours,  of  which  he  had  many. 
**  Do  you  know,"  he  writes,  '*  what  it  is  which 
makes  man  the  most  suffering  of  all  creatures  ?  It 
is  that  he  has  one  foot  in  the  finite  and  the  other  in 
the  infinite,  and  that  he  is  torn  asunder  not  by  four 
horses,  as  in  the  horrible  old  times,  but  between  two 
worlds."  The  sombre  magnificence  of  the  utter- 
ance does  not  hide  from  us  its  essential  falsity. 
There  are  the  two  worlds  assuredly ;  but  why  miser- 
able in  their  midst,  why  torn  asunder  ?  We  are  made 
not  to  be  torn,  but  to  be  at  home  in  both,  and  to  find 
in  this  double  possession  the  unspeakable  richness 
of  existence.  For  it  is  precisely  the  fulness  of  the 
spiritual  realm  that  gives  us  ease  and  happiness  amid 
all  the  denials  of  the  external. 

To  be  perfectly  at  home  in  this  world  we  need, 
as  chief  condition,  to  have  found  a  home  in  the  other. 
It  is  to  carry  your  outfit  within  you  ;  an  outfit  which, 

37 


Faith^s    Certainties 

wherever  you  are,  finds  for  you  roof,  walls  and  inner 
furniture.  There  are,  it  is  true,  people  better  born 
in  this  respect  than  others  ;  born  with  the  priceless 
gift  of  temperament.  One  thinks  here  of  De 
Quincey's  description  of  Goldsmith  :  "He  had  a 
constitutional  gaiety  of  heart,  an  elastic  hilarity,  and 
as  he  expresses  it,  *  a  knack  of  hoping,'  a  knack  which 
could  not  be  bought  with  Ormus  and  with  Ind,  nor 
hired  for  a  day  with  the  peacock  throne  of  Delhi." 
Others  have  found  things  not  so  easy.  "  With  a 
great  price  "  have  they  won  this  freedom.  But  they 
have  won  it.  They  have  found  content  by  finding 
God.  That  was  how  the  great  Apostle  found  it. 
Was  there  ever  a  finer  text  to  live  upon  than  this 
word  of  his  :  "  For  I  have  learned  in  whatsoever 
state  I  am  therewith  to  be  content."  Heavens, 
what  states  this  man  had  been  in  !  But  he  walks  the 
world  as  a  free,  joyous  man,  free  and  joyous  because 
he  had  penetrated  to  its  centre  and  found  God  there  ! 
That  is  a  find  if  you  like.  And  the  story  of  it,  the 
human  story  !  When  you  have  had  your  fill  of 
literature,  is  there  anything,  after  all,  so  moving,  so 
fascinating  as  the  history  of  spiritual  men ;  the 
story  of  how  they  found  God  ;  of  how  they  found 
their  home  in  the  unseen  ?  And  it  is  there,  at  the 
core  of  every  literature.  The  world-story  is  full  of 
it ;  it  is  the  Bible  of  humanity.  Not  in  the  Judaean 
books  only,  but  before  them  in  the  Vedas,  the 
Ramayana  of  India,  the  Egyptian  Book  of  the  Dead, 
the  inscriptions  of  Assyria  and  Babylonia,  the 
Avestaof  Persia.  It  is  the  same  story  that  we  find — 
with  new  notes  added — in  psalm  and  prophet ; 
in  the  New  Testament,  and  through  all  the 
Christian    ages.     Let    us    say    with    Fichte  :     "  An 

38 


The  Great  Findings 

insight  into  the  absolute  unity  of  human  existence 
with  the  Divine  is  certainly  the  profoundest  know- 
ledge that  man  can  attain."  And  that  blissful 
insight  has  been  granted  to  men  in  every  age  and 
country  of  the  world.  Do  not  imagine  we  Westerns 
have  had  the  monopoly  of  it.  The  East  has  shared 
it  with  us  ;  has  had  it  before  us.  The  unity  of  the 
race  has  been,  in  fact,  its  unity  in  the  knowledge  of 
God.  We  are  one  with  each  other  in  being  one  with 
Him. 

That,  we  say,  is  the  greatest  of  finds.  It  is  the 
hid  treasure  lying  beneath  the  world's  rocky  soil. 
For  discovering  it,  here  is  a  good  prescription,  again 
from  Fichte,  the  bravest  and  devoutest  of  spiritual 
prospectors  :  "  If  a  man  is  to  find  a  witness  for  the 
soul,  immortality  and  God  at  all,  he  must  find  it  in 
himself,  and  in  the  spiritual  history  of  his  fellows. 
He  must,  in  freedom,  venture  the  belief  in  these 
things,  and  find  their  corroboration  in  the  contri- 
bution which  they  make  to  the  solution  of  the 
mystery  of  life.  One  must  venture  to  win  them. 
If  it  were  not  so  they  would  not  be  objects  of  faith." 
And  with  a  furniture  like  that  inside  you,  you  can 
afford  to  be  a  merry  soul.  Does  the  outside  loom  in 
clouds  and  darkness  ?  You  can  use  this  prescription 
for  the  dealing  with  clouds  : 

The  inner  side  of  every  cloud 

Is  bright  and  shining  ; 
So  therefore  turn  your  clouds  about, 
And  always  wear  them  inside  out 

To  show  the  hning. 


39 


IV 

LIFE'S  LOOSE  ENDS 

Benjamin   Constant  relates  that   he   met   once 
with  a  Piedmontese  who  gave  him  his  confession 
of  faith.     He  beheved  that  the  world  was  made  by  a 
God  who  had  died  before  his  work  was  completed. 
Only  in  this  way  could  he  account  for  the  bewilder- 
ing contradictions  which  he  found  everywhere  ;    on 
the  one  side  the  evident  marks  of  law,   order  and 
beneficent    design ;     on    the    other    hand,    the    con- 
fusions, the  evils,  the  ragged  edges  of  things.     Every- 
where an  aim  at  perfection  which  had  stopped  short, 
a  purpose  uncompleted,  if  not    frustrated.     So  our 
Piedmontese  ;    who  certainly,   amid  the  medley  of 
cosmic  theories  with  which  philosophy  has  presented 
us,  has  the  merit  of  offering  one  as  quaint  as  it  is 
original.      His  solution  is  the  last  we  should   think 
of  accepting,  but  he  unquestionably  had  an  eye  for 
certain  aspects  of  things  which  call  for  a  solution. 
He  was  certainly  right  in  regarding  the  world  as  an 
unfinished  one.     The  architect's  plan,  whatever  it  is, 
has   not   been   carried   to   completion.      One  might 
rather  say  that  everything  seems  in  a  state  of  experi- 
mentation,   as   of   an   intelligence   groping   its   way 
amid  difficulties,  trying  this  plan  and  that,  with  vary- 
ing   success.     All    nature's    handiworks    show    this 
singularity.     The  vegetable  world  is  full  of  it.     The 
flowers  are  inventors,  with  hits  more  or  less  happy. 

40 


Life's  Loose  Ends 

Some  plants,  such  as  the  mistletoe,  juniper,  and 
mountain  ash,  have  made  the  birds  their  seed 
carriers.  Others,  such  as  the  lucerne,  have  invented 
the  Archimedean  screw,  before  Archimedes,  and 
tried  to  apply  it  in  flying.  The  plants  go  from  simple 
means  to  more  complex  ones.  The  human  body 
seems  also  a  series  of  experiments.  Oculists  talk  of 
the  eye's  defects,  despite  the  wonders  of  its  con- 
struction. 

Man  himself  seems  a  movement  towards  some- 
thing greater.  He  is  that  individually  and  also 
socially.  In  this  last  aspect  we  may  accept  Tyrrell's 
striking  word  :  "  The  whole  world  is  in  labour.  Man 
is  feeling  after  something  living  that  is  coming  to 
birth  through  a  series  of  uncouth  embryonic  develop- 
ments." We  can  never  conceive  of  this  as  a  perfect 
world — with  all  the  evils  that  are  in  it.  The  old 
theology  accounted  for  this  by  its  doctrine  of  a  Fall 
and  of  original  sin.  But  that  was  really  a  Platonic 
rather  than  a  Christian  doctrine.  You  will  find  it 
nowhere  in  the  teaching  of  Christ.  And  at  best,  it 
only  removed  the  difficulty  one  step  farther  back.  It 
left  us  with  the  question,  "  Why  a  Fall,  and  why 
evil  as  part  of  the  creative  scheme  ?  "  Indeed,  some 
of  the  theological  expedients  here  have  been  about 
as  effective  for  their  purpose  as  the  effort  of  the 
Psyllic  tribe,  of  whom  we  read  that  they  made  a 
warlike  expedition  against  the  south  wind,  which  had 
brought  famine  upon  them,  and  who  perished  in  the 
desert. 

We  are  to-day  reversing  those  verdicts.  We  have 
nothing  to  do  with  the  hypothesis  of  a  dead  God,  or  of 
a  defeated  one.  We  see  mind  and  will  behind 
phenomena  ;     a  mind  and  will  that  are  ahve   and 

41 


Faith  s   Certainties 

active.  But  it  is  a  mind  and  will  that,  by  an  eternal 
Kenosis,  stooping  from  its  own  height,  is  incarnate 
in  us  and  in  the  world  ;  lowering  its  intelligence  to 
bring  it  into  touch  with  ours,  making  the  world  by  our 
means,  and  so  achieving  its  largest  ends — that  of 
making  ourselves.  That  is  why  we  have  a  world  of 
experiment — because  experiment  is  so  good  for  us. 
Instead  of  a  perfect  world,  where  the  creature  would 
have  nothing  to  do  but  to  look  on — at  best  a  tiresome 
and  enervating  business — we  have  one  which  at  every 
point  calls  us  to  action,  and  by  so  doing  creates  our 
faculties ;  creates  our  courage,  our  initiative,  our 
endurance,  our  delight  of  achievement.  To  have 
made  a  perfect  world  would  have  been  to  condemn 
us  to  an  imbecile  idleness.  Our  God  is  better 
than  this.  He  will  have  none  of  the  selfishness 
of  solitary  achievement.  It  is  His  kindness  which 
calls  us  to  His  aid,  which  secures  us  the  happiness 
of  the  co-worker.  He  has  filled  the  world  with 
difficulty  that  we  might  know  the  bliss  of  over- 
coming it,  and  in  so  doing  mount  on  perpetual  steps 
of  rising  faculty. 

Assuredly,  the  scheme  of  things  has  left  enough  for 
us  to  do.  In  no  direction  do  we  find  a  finished  work. 
Our  very  truths,  so  called,  are  full  of  ragged  edges. 
There  is  not  a  system  of  philosophy,  from  Plato  to 
Neo-Hegelianism,  or  the  latest  Pragmatism,  that 
you  cannot  knock  holes  in.  Think  of  the  religious 
evidences  !  Religion,  to  those  who  know  its  secret 
beauty,  its  hidden  power,  is  the  most  precious  value 
the  world  contains.  The  men  who  are  without 
it — so  numerous  to-day — are  the  world's  real  paupers, 
the  emptiest,  forlornest  of  all  God's  creatures.  There 
is  no  destitution,  for  its  misery  and  despair,  com- 

42 


Life's  Loose  Ends 

parable  to  spiritual  destitution.  And  yet  this  un- 
speakably precious  value — how  exposed,  how 
recklessly  defenceless  it  seems  !  It  is  left  at  the 
loosest  of  ends.  Christianity  comes  into  the  world, 
and  its  existence  is  left  apparently  to  a  thousand 
chances.  The  four  Gospels,  its  written  witnesses, 
have  the  strangest  of  hterary  fortunes.  The  oldest 
and  most  authoritative  of  them — Mark — the  one 
nearest  the  facts,  appears  to  have  dropped  in  its 
circulation  to  one  mutilated  copy,  which  the 
authors  of  Matthew  and  Luke  discover,  and  from 
which  they  have  extensively  borrowed.  The  suc- 
cessive intellectual  defences  of  Christianity,  set  up  by 
friends  who  have  often  been  more  dangerous  to  it 
than  its  enemies,  have  continually  been  levelled  to 
the  ground.  The  Church  has  often  been  its  worst 
foe.  It  has  founded  itself  on  everything  but  the 
truth ;  founded  itself  on  a  bogus  donation  of 
Constantine,  on  a  set  of  forged  decretals ;  on  an 
assumption  of  infallibility  which  has  shocked  the 
world's  sanity  ;  has  built  its  theology  on  a  cosmic 
theory  which  has  long  been  outgrown.  We  have  to 
admit  with  Burkitt  that  "  the  more  we  investigate 
the  early  history  of  the  Christian  Church  with  open 
and  unprejudiced  eyes,  the  more  we  find  ourselves 
in  a  strange  world,  dominated  by  fixed  ideas  that  are 
not  our  fixed  ideas,  and  permeated  by  an  intellectual 
atmosphere  quite  different  from  ours." 

The  intellectual  defences  of  Christianity  have 
been,  from  Lucian  to  Diderot,  the  scorn  of  the 
world's  wits.  And  to-day  the  Christian  creeds  and 
orthodoxies  fail  in  a  dozen  ways  to  fit  themselves  to 
the  demands  of  the  modern  mind.  Such  multitudes 
of  really  earnest  thinkers  are  still  in  the  condition 

43 


Faith's   Certainties 

represented  by  the  pathetic  confession  of  Herbert 
Spencer  :  "  Rehgious  creeds  which  in  one  way  or 
another  occupy  the  sphere  which  material  interpre- 
tation seeks  to  occupy,  and  fails  the  more  it  seeks, 
I  have  come  to  regard  with  a  sympathy  based  on 
community  of  need ;  feeling  that  dissent  from  them 
results  from  inability  to  accept  the  solutions  offered, 
joined  with  the  wish  that  solutions  could  be  found." 
And  yet  Christianity  lives  !  It  not  only  lives,  but  it 
grows  and  holds  the  field.  It  lives,  despite  all  the 
mistakes  of  its  theology,  notwithstanding  all  the 
persevering  efforts  of  the  Church  to  misrepresent 
and  to  falsify  it.  What  is  the  meaning  of  all  this  ? 
There  seems  only  one  explanation.  Christianity 
came  not  as  a  theory  but  as  a  life — a  new  kind  of 
life.  And  its  fortune  has  been  like  that  of  a  savage 
who  is  indeed  alive,  but  whose  explanation  of  his 
Ufe,  of  his  body  and  his  soul,  are  the  most  grotesque 
misrepresentation  of  the  reality.  When  he  gets 
some  anatomy  and  physiology  he  will  find  some 
better  though  still  inadequate  theories.  Christianity 
has  persisted  because  men,  apart  from  their  crude 
thinking  about  it,  have  felt  the  thrill  of  its  life.  It 
has  persisted  because  age  after  age  it  has  offered  to 
the  soul  its  hidden  manna  ;  has  ministered  as  nothing 
else  has  done  to  its  moral  and  spiritual  hunger. 
Have  we  not  here  another  illustration  of  our  doctrine 
of  loose  ends  ?  Are  not  the  evidences  left  in  this 
condition  in  order  that  we  each  may  find  our  own 
evidences,  may  become  men  of  faith  by  taking  all  the 
risks  of  it,  the  risk-taking  being  part  of  our  spiritual 
education?  Coleridge,  in  his  "Aids  to  Reflection," 
has  put  it  all  in  a  nutshell  :  "  Evidences  of  Christi- 
anity ?     I   am  weary  of  the  word.     Make  a  man 

44 


Life's  Loose  Ends 

feel  the  want  of  it,  and  you  may  safely  trust  to  its 
own  evidences  !  " 

There  are  other  directions  to-day  in  which  life 
seems  at  the  loosest  of  ends,  and  where  our  human 
faculty,  our  communal  sense,  is  called  upon  for 
its  strongest  assertion.  Take  the  question  of 
international  armaments.  The  issue  here  is  becom- 
ing more  and  more  a  simple  one.  It  is  an  issue 
between  the  doctrine  of  hate  and  the  doctrine  of 
faith.  The  theory  on  which  we  are  ruining  ourselves 
with  armies  and  battleships  is  the  theory  that  while 
men  in  their  personal  relations  may  act  on  principles 
of  mutual  truth,  honour  and  probity,  nations,  as  such, 
are  robbers,  assassins  and  cut-throats,  destitute  of 
any  beginning  of  ethics,  ready  to  lie,  to  cheat,  to 
thieve  and  to  murder  on  any  scale,  given  the  oppor- 
tunity. It  is  on  this  principle  that  we  in  England 
are  invited — one  may  say  commanded — to  maintain 
a  navy  which  is  to  surpass  hugely  all  possible  combi- 
nations of  foreign  fleets,  because  if  that  preponder- 
ance be  imperilled  we  shall  be  immediately  over- 
whelmed. Has  it  ever  occurred  to  us  to  inquire 
why,  on  this  supposition,  all  the  other  states  take 
matters  so  easily  ?  They  are  increasing  their 
navies  ;  yet  Germany,  Italy,  Russia,  France,  Den- 
mark, in  fact,  every  other  nation  on  earth,  is  to-day 
living  under  the  shadow  of  the  British  preponderance. 
Yet  do  they  expect  that  we  shall  devour  them  ?  Do 
they  feel  that  unless  they  surpass  us,  as  we  have 
surpassed  them,  they  have  no  security  and  are  at  our 
mercy  ?  Are  they  contemplating  budgets  which 
will  be  beyond  our  level  as  their  only  chance  of  life  ? 
But  if  they,  in  their  manifest  inferiority,  can  go  on 
quietly  and  without  panic,  why  could  not  we  in  a 

45 


Faith's   Certainties 

similar  condition  ?  Is  it  the  number  of  our  guns 
that  keeps  the  peace,  or  is  it  the  world's  growing 
fellowship  and  common-sense  ?  In  international 
affairs  we  are  still  in  the  savage  period  of  ethics. 
But  the  day  is  coming  when  nations  will  be  as 
ashamed  of  their  warships  as  we  should  be  of  going 
about  decked  with  dagger  and  pistol.  It  is  time  we 
set  about  this  business  ;  that  we  set  about  in  earnest 
the  evangelisation  of  our  world  politics. 

And  are  we  not  at  a  loose  end  in  our  social  con- 
ditions— in  the  organisation  of  the  best  life  for  the 
people  ?  We  have  countless  anomalies  here,  but 
let  us  look  at  one  of  them.  In  a  following  essay 
on  "  Our  Possessions  "  we  speak  of  ownership  as 
one  of  the  essentials  of  a  healthy  life.  To  realise 
ourselves  we  need  to  have  a  hold  on  something  out- 
side ourselves.  We  cannot  work  properly  without 
tools,  without  food  and  raiment,  without  the  stimulus 
of  returns.  We  want  something  to  stand  on  before 
we  can  stand  upright.  There  is  a  joy  of  possession 
which  is  our  proper  birthright.  And  it  has  been  one 
of  the  great  arguments  against  Socialism  that  in  its 
war  against  private  property  it  would  destroy  one 
of  the  chief  stimulants  of  individual  activity,  one  of 
life's  acutest  joys.  But  observe  now  what  is  happen- 
ing. It  is  not  Socialism,  but  Capitalism,  as  at 
present  organised,  that  is  destroying  private  property. 
That  is  to  say,  it  is  making  it  less  and  less  possible 
for  the  great  mass  of  men  to  possess  anything  of  their 
own.  The  multiple  shop  is  wiping  out  the  small 
tradesman  ;  landlordism,  armed  with  the  Enclosure 
Acts  of  past  generations,  has  dispossessed  the 
labourer  of  his  free  acres,  of  his  rights  of  pasture,  of 
his  secure  tenure,  and  has  driven  him  to  the  towns. 

46 


Life's  Loose  Ends 

The  vast  mass  of  the  people  have  become  wage- 
earners,  and  that  in  the  employ  not  of  persons 
whom  they  know,  with  whom  they  have  personal 
relations,  but  of  corporations  of  shareholders  for 
whom  the  workman  is  only  a  creator  of  dividends. 
The  owners  become  fewer  and  fewer,  and  their 
holdings  ever  more  enormous.  The  net  result  is  that 
private  property,  the  possession  of  which  every 
philosopher  from  Aristotle  downwards  has  signalised 
as  a  condition  of  the  full  development  of  personality, 
one  of  the  factors  in  the  making  of  a  free  man,  free 
in  body  and  soul,  is  becoming  the  monopoly  of  a 
limited  caste,  leaving  the  great  mass  of  mankind 
without  this  essential  of  a  full  manhood.  Is  it  not 
time  we  woke  up  to  the  dread  possibilities  and 
actualities  of  this  development  ?  Is  it  not  time  we 
learned  the  simple  ethics  of  economics,  of  wealth  and 
of  its  proper  distribution  ?  What  is  the  first  busi- 
ness of  the  community  if  it  is  not  the  creation  of 
conditions  for  the  healthiest,  happiest  Ufe  for  all  its 
members  ?  Is  it  a  right  state  where  one  small  and 
ever-diminishing  section  possess  wealth  to  the 
extent  of  a  disease,  while  the  vast  majority  are  in  a 
worse  disease  for  the  want  of  it  ?  This  loose  end  will 
have  to  be  gathered  up.  A  nation's  wealth  is  in  the 
lives  of  its  people,  and  that  Hfe  will  never  reach  its 
fulness  of  strength,  character  and  enjoyment  till  the 
materials  of  it,  visible  as  well  as  invisible,  are 
brought  once  more  within  the  reach  of  all. 

There  is  a  personal  side  to  this  topic  which  might 
well  have  occupied  all  our  thought,  but  which  we  can 
now  only  briefly  touch  upon.  How  often  do  we  seem, 
in  our  private  fortunes,  to  be  brought  to  a  loose 
end  ?     Some  source  of  supply  has  been  stopped  ; 

47 


Faith's   Certainties 

some  door  of  career  has  been  suddenly  slammed  in  our 
face.  The  well-defined  track  we  have  followed  has 
all  at  once  disappeared — we  are  faced  with  the 
wilderness,  wherein  we  must  strike  a  road  of  our 
own.  Most  of  us  who  have  lived  any  time  in  the 
world  have  had  a  touch  of  that  experience.  It  is 
one  of  the  greatest  tests  of  character.  We  have 
been  good  enough  for  routine  ;  what  good  are  we  for 
this  crisis  of  the  unexpected  ?  It  is  here  that  strong 
men  prove  their  strength.  How  often  has  that 
moment  proved  the  starting-point  of  mightiest 
things  !  It  was  so  with  Wesley  when  he  found 
himself  in  hopeless  conflict  with  the  Anglican 
authorities,  and  he  must  choose  some  other  way. 
And  with  General  Booth,  his  true  successor,  when 
on  that  fateful  morning  he  left  the  New  Connexion 
Conference,  his  terms  rejected,  his  career  as  one 
of  its  ministers  closed,  and  himself  in  face  of  a  new, 
untried  world.  Spurgeon  had  his  moment  when 
by  the  strangest  of  accidents  he  missed  his  collegiate 
training.  But  these  men  "  made  good,"  as  the 
Americans  say,  of  their  loose  end.  And  their 
example  shows  us  how  a  loose  end  in  life,  encountered 
with  courage  and  faith,  may  become  to  us  our  divine 
moment ;  may  prove  the  turning-point  to  our  true 
vocation.  Assuredly  no  man,  whether  he  be  great 
or  small,  should  be  afraid  of  his  loose  ends.  They 
are  life's  great  possibles  ;  they  call  upon  what  is  in 
us.  The  gulf  that  yawns  in  front  reveals  your  leap- 
ing power.  The  seeming  ruin  may  be  the  beginning 
of  your  better  fortunes.  The  world  is  full  of  hopes 
for  the  man  who  has  hope  in  himself. 

The  way  to  master  the  world's  loose  ends  is  to  have 
no  loose  ends  in  ourselves.     Things  may  snap  at  the 

48 


Life's   Loose  Ends 

circumference,  but  there  will  be  no  catastrophe  if 
there  is  soundness  at  the  centre.  A  man  may  find 
his  world  tumbUng  around  him,  as  when  Robertson 
of  Brighton  saw  the  dogmatic  structure  of  his  earlier 
creed  crumbhng  to  ruin.  He  found  himself  with 
nothing  to  believe  in  but  God  and  duty.  But  in  that 
wild  hour  those  central  anchors  held  ;  held  till  a 
clearer,  fuller,  saner  Gospel  faith  was  born  in 
him,  a  faith  which  proved  good  for  thousands  of 
other  storm-tossed  souls.  The  thing  is  to  hold  on 
and  never  to  give  up.  Believe,  in  the  tempest's 
fiercest  hour,  that  the  world  you  are  in  is  water- 
tight, and  is  not  going  to  founder.  You  are  in  a 
world  of  loose  ends,  and  the  handling  of  them  calls 
for  every  atom  of  strength  and  courage  that  is  in 
you.  But  the  farthest  ends  of  them  are  not  loose. 
They  are  gripped  by  a  Hand  that  is  Love  and 
Omnipotence. 


49 


V 

THE  HEART  OF  THINGS 

What  a  role  the  word  "  heart  "  plays  in  language 
and  in  literature  !  It  means  for  us  the  deepest,  most 
vital  thing  there  is.  We  speak  of  the  heart  of  a 
matter,  as  that  which,  when  all  the  outside  trappings 
and  concealments  have  been  removed,  lies  there 
before  us,  the  actual,  central  fact.  London,  we  say, 
is  the  heart  of  the  empire — because  its  greatest 
life  pulses  there  ;  because  its  wealth  is  there  concen- 
trated ;  because  the  influences,  the  power  gener- 
ated there,  touch  the  farthest  limits  of  the  English 
world.  You  find  yourself  on  some  elect  spot  of  the 
mountains  ;  on  a  glacier,  with  jagged  peaks  rising 
to  right  and  left  ;  where  you  breathe  an  air  like  wine, 
with  a  sky  almost  black  in  contrast  with  the  dazzling 
white  of  the  snows  ;  the  stillness  unbroken  save  by 
the  roar  of  the  avalanche,  the  concentration  of  all 
that  is  beautiful,  sublime,  terrible  ;  and  you  feel  that 
you  are  in  the  heart  of  the  Alps.  Richard  Jefferies, 
in  one  of  his  most  moving  books,  speaks  of  putting 
his  ear  to  the  ground  and  hearing  the  beating  of 
nature's  heart.  We  talk  of  the  heart  of  humanity,  of 
the  heart  of  religion. 

The  word,  as  thus  used,  is  well  derived.  The 
physical  heart,  which  gives  us  all  these  analogies, 
is  the  centre  of  our  bodily  life.  You  can  get  on,  in  a 
way,  without  arms  and  legs,  without  ears  and  eyes, 

50 


The   Heart  of  Things 

with  half  a  lung.  But  strike  the  heart  and  all  is  over. 
It  lies  there  in  the  centre  of  us ;  strongly  entrenched 
behind  its  barrier  of  bony  ribs,  its  tireless  muscles 
the  very  concentration  of  energy,  doing  its  one 
hundred  thousand  pulsations  a  day,  its  thirty-six  and 
a-half  millions  in  the  year ;  while  we  sleep  and  while  we 
wake,  without  a  thought  from  us,  without  a  hand's 
turn  of  our  conscious  help,  performing  its  ceaseless 
systole,  diastole.  Were  it  to  strike  work ;  to 
propose  to  itself  a  holiday  ;  to  take  one  minute's 
rest,  it  were  all  over  with  us.  And  what  is  true  of 
the  physical  heart  is  so  largely  true  of  all  the  appli- 
cations of  the  word.  The  imperial  city,  the  heart  of 
an  empire,  is  its  best-guarded  spot.  Its  people 
know  that  to  strike  at  that  is  to  strike  at  everything. 
The  heart  of  a  warship  is  its  enginery.  It  is  placed 
below,  beneath  the  water  line.  A  shell  exploding  on 
deck  may  do  damage  enough,  but  it  can  be  repaired. 
When  the  engines  are  wrecked,  the  ship  is  helpless, 
dead.  The  heart  of  a  thing  is  almost  always  a 
concealed  affair,  guarded  jealously  from  the  common 
eye.  You  have  to  reach  it  by  devious  ways,  by 
persevering  endeavour.  You  find  that  in  all  human 
creations,  especially  mental  creations.  The  work 
of  a  dramatist,  of  a  novelist,  has  always  a  heart  inside 
it,  a  heart  which  he  carefully  conceals.  It  was  the 
first  thing  that  occurred  to  him  ;  it  is  the  last  which 
he  wishes  shall  occur  to  his  reader.  Around  the 
guarded  centre  he  builds  up  all  manner  of  outworks, 
of  approaches.  He  fills  the  ground  with  descriptions, 
with  character  sketches,  with  cunningly-devised 
bypaths  which  carry  the  inquirers  off  the  scent.  The 
heart  of  the  thing  is  one  single  idea,  the  mystery,  the 
secret,  which  is  finally  disclosed.     The  great  sermon 

5X 


Faith's   Certainti  es 

of  a  great  preacher  will  be  the  development  of  one 
idea,  the  thrusting  home  of  one  imperious  thought. 
It  was  said  of  Newman  that  he  would  often  preach 
a  sermon  in  order  to  introduce  one  suggestion  ;  a 
suggestion  contained  in  a  single  sentence. 

It  is,  we  have  said,  not  easy  to  get  at  the  heart  of 
things.  It  is  so  well  concealed.  You  go  up  in  your 
train  of  a  morning  with  every  seat  filled.  If  you 
have  a  quick  eye  you  can  note  the  dress  of  each 
fellow  traveller  and  his  physical  peculiarities.  But 
each  carries  hiL  secrets  which  you  do  not  know.  We 
British  are  a  reticent  race.  There  is  a  saying  in 
France  that  not  only  is  England  an  island,  but  every 
Englishman  is  an  island  ;  there  is  a  lot  of  cold  water 
to  be  got  through  before  you  reach  him.  England 
and  France  have  lived  all  these  centuries  with  only 
a  few  miles  between  them,  but  how  much  do  they 
know  of  each  other  ?  What  ideas  the  French  have 
had  of  England,  and  we  EngUsh  of  the  French  ! 
And  yet  get  behind  the  crust  ;  get  into  the  beating 
heart  of  each,  as  you  do  in  their  best  Hterature,  and 
what  do  you  find  ?  You  find  the  same  great  instincts, 
the  same  ideas  possessing  them.  Their  hearts  beat 
to  the  same  tune.  Go  on  to  Germany,  to  Italy,  you 
find  the  same  thing.  When  you  know  the  Hterature 
of  a  people,  still  more  if  you  live  among  them,  you 
begin  to  love  them.  That  is  what  Lowell  found. 
He,  the  American,  had  hved  in  London,  in  Paris, 
in  Madrid  ;  knew  these  peoples,  their  best  Hteratures. 
And  he  found  he  was  in  love  with  them  all.  The 
present  international  distrust  ;  the  distrust  which 
covers  the  sea  with  hateful  warships  ;  which  burdens 
the  peoples  with  the  crushing  load  of  armaments, 
is  born  of  international  ignorance.     When  the  peoples 

52 


The  Heart  of  Things 

have  come  to  know  each  other  ;  to  know  themselves 
as  having  the  same  honest  affections,  the  same 
struggle,  the  same  hopes  and  fears  ;  when  they  come 
to  know  the  vastness  of  their  soul's  common  capital, 
and  the  insignificance  of  their  difference  compared 
with  that,  they  will  break  from  the  past  regime  of 
terror  as  a  thing  not  only  horrible  but  ludicrous  ;  an 
artificial  antagonism  between  those  who  were  born 
to  be  friends.  There  is  a  deeper  question  here, 
which  we  will  come  to  presently. 

We  see  how  everything,  the  rose  in  your  garden,  an 
empire,  a  book,  has  its  heart.  When  we  take  a  wider, 
the  widest  view,  and  survey  nature  and  life,  the  uni- 
verse we  live  in,  is  there  a  heart  there,  and  have  we 
any  means  of  finding  it  ?  This  vast  scheme  of  the 
world,  does  it  contain  such  a  thing  as  a  central  idea 
controUing  it  ?  We  feel  at  once  how  strange  it 
would  be,  how  contrary  to  all  analogy,  were  it  not 
so.  Is  there  a  heart  of  things  always  in  the  particu- 
lar and  none  in  the  universal  ?  Shall  the  bee,  the 
flower,  the  man,  the  artist's  creation,  the  moving 
story,  have  each  its  central  thought,  and  shall  this 
be  lacking  in  the  whole  ?  The  early  world,  with 
magnificent  unanimity,  denied  this  negative.  But 
our  modern  world  has  traversed  their  answer  and 
begun  the  quest  anew.  Science,  with  a  brand  new 
set  of  instruments,  has  attacked  the  problem,  and 
come  back  with  some  shattering  conclusions.  It 
has  surveyed  the  universe  from  end  to  end — its 
infinitely  great,  its  infinitely  Httle— and  finds  nothing 
there  but  matter  and  force,  bound  in  an  iron  necessity. 
It  finds  man  himself  only  a  part  of  the  mechanism  ; 
his  supposed  freewill  a  delusion,  his  thought  a  secre- 
tion   of    the    brain,    his    God   nowhere.     His   latest 

53 


Faith's    Certainties 

poetry  is  so  often  a  poetry  of  despair.     Man — who 
or  what  is  man  ? 

Rather   some  random  throw 

Of  heedless  nature's  die, 
'Twould  seem,  that  from  so  low 

Has  hfted  him  so  high. 
Through  untold  aeons  vast 

She  let  him  lurk  and  cower  ; 
'Twould  seem  he  climbed  at  last 

In  mere  fortuitous  hour. 
Child  of  a  thousand  chances  'neath  the  indifferent  sky. 

We  have  hved  through  all  this,  through  the  age 
of  scientific  materialism.  The  withering  blast  of 
this  stiff  north-easter  has  hit  us  in  the  face,  and 
made  us  draw  our  cloaks  a  little  closer.  But  some- 
how, amid  all  the  hurly-burly  of  the  storm,  we 
have  found  the  heart  within  us  to  go  on  beating 
as  steadily  as  before,  its  sturdy  affirmatives 
making  mock  at  all  this  tempest  of  denial.  The 
scientists  went  out  to  find  what  assuredly  is  never 
to  be  found  by  their  instruments  or  their  methods 
of  investigation.  Their  tools  are  not  fine  enough. 
They  can  weigh  and  measure,  but  the  thing  they 
sought  is  not  to  be  weighed  and  measured.  M. 
Loisy,  the  French  heretic,  whom  Catholicism  has 
found  too  big  for  its  borders,  has  said  on  this  theme 
what  is  surely  the  true  and  final  thing.  "  God  does 
not  show  Himself  at  the  end  of  the  astronomer's 
telescope.  Geology,  in  its  examination  of  the 
earthly  crust,  does  not  exhume  Him.  The  chemist 
does  not  extract  Him  from  his  crucible.  Although 
He  is  everywhere  in  the  world,  He  is  nowhere  the 
direct  object  of  science.  He  is  also  everywhere  in 
the  history  of  humanity,  but  He  is  no  more  a  person- 
age in  history  than  He  is  an  element  of  the  physical 

54 


The   Heart   of  Things 

world.  Does  the  history  of  religion  present  Him 
as  an  immediate  and  complete  revelation  of  the 
Divine  Being  ?  Does  it  not  show  rather  as  a  slow 
progress,  of  which  each  stage  supposes  that  which 
preceded  it,  and  prepares  that  which  follows  it  ? 
This  history,  even  in  the  gospels,  is  a  human  history, 
so  far  as  it  is  produced  in  humanity." 

"  Humanity,"  "  a  human  history."  Yes,  it  is 
there  we  get  our  real  clue  to  the  heart  of  things.  Man, 
not  that  part  of  him  which  physical  science  can  reach, 
his  flesh  and  bones,  the  body  that  can  be  weighed  and 
dissected,  but  the  invisible  behind  that ;  the  thought, 
the  mind,  the  instincts  and  affections,  the  veritable 
soul.  And  it  is  in  this  inmost  soul  of  man,  as  known 
to  ourselves,  as  revealed  in  all  human  history,  that 
we  come  nighest  the  heart  of  things,  that  we  are  in 
contact  with  the  universal  soul.  And  the  great 
thing  here  is  the  unanimity  of  its  verdict.  We 
spoke  a  moment  ago  of  the  human  heart  as  beating 
to  the  same  tune.  We  return  now  to  the  deeper 
significance  of  this — its  significance  for  religion. 
There  have  been  writers  of  late,  here  and  there,  who 
have  denied  this  unanimity.  We  are  told  of  the 
ineradicable  differences  between  Orient  and  Occident. 
"  East  is  East  and  West  is  West."  Lafcadio  Hearn 
declares  that  where  the  Western  thinks  to  the  right 
the  Eastern  thinks  to  the  left.  The  missionary 
platform  of  a  century  ago  had  for  its  main  plank  the 
doctrine  that  Christianity  stood  for  the  one  true 
and  saving  faith  amidst  a  world  of  false  and  soul- 
destroying  ones.  But  does  the  East  think  contrary 
to  the  West  ?  Does  its  soul  point  in  an  opposite 
direction  ?  Does  it  in  material  things  ?  Does 
Japan,  in  constructing  its  warships,  in  carrying  on 

55 


Faith's   Ce rtainties 

its  great  engineering  works,  proceed  on  different 
mathematical  principles  from  our  own  ?  It  is  our 
rival  here  because  its  mind  works  on  exactly  the  same 
lines.  And  on  this  deeper  question  of  the  heart  of 
things,  what  is  the  finding  of  our  later,  more 
accurate  research  ?  Was  ancient  Greece  all  wrong  ? 
Read  Plato,  read  Aristotle,  read  the  great  dramatists. 
It  was  on  Aristotle  that  the  Catholic  Church  of  the 
Middle  Ages  founded  its  whole  philosophy  ;  it  was 
his  categories  it  used  for  the  formulation  of  its 
faith.  The  early  Fathers  got  their  doctrine  of  the 
state,  of  applied  morality,  from  the  Stoics.  Go 
farther  East.  Read,  say,  the  sacred  literature  of 
ancient  Persia.  Its  doctrine  is  of  a  God  who  is  not 
only  holy  and  pure,  but  is  the  God  essentially  of 
love,  of  grace,  of  forgiveness  and  redemption  to 
the  uttermost.  It  confronts  evil,  concentrated  in 
Ahriman,  the  Persian  Satan,  with  the  conquering 
might  of  Ormuzd,  the  spirit  of  the  good.  And 
observe  this  :  the  God  here  worshipped  is  not  only 
conqueror  of  evil,  but — in  this  so  far  surpassing 
much  of  our  mediaeval  theology — he  conquers  to 
forgive  and  to  reclaim.  He  enters  the  great  fight 
with  the  desire,  not  to  destroy,  but  to  save  his  enemy. 
He  beseeches  Ahriman  to  become  good,  to  love  the 
good,  to  have  pity  on  himself.  In  his  inexhaustible 
grace  he  follows  him  with  entreaties  to  become  con- 
verted, to  accomplish  his  salvation,  to  find  his  happi- 
ness in  reaching  a  new  and  better  mind.  Our  best 
missionary  thinkers  and  workers  of  to-day,  better 
instructed  than  those  of  old,  are  preaching  a 
Christianity  to  the  East,  not  as  a  contradiction 
and  condemnation  of  all  it  had  known  before, 
but     as     a     completion      of     that     earlier     divine 

56 


The  Heart  of  Things 

education  under  which  their  fathers  had  felt  their 
way  to  God. 

To-day  enhghted  Christians  hold  and  proclaim 
their  gospel  as  showing  the  nearest  approach  to  the 
heart  of  things  which  has  yet  been  opened  to  our 
race.  And  of  this  heart  of  things  it  is  the  heart,  and 
not  all  which  has  surrounded  and  so  often  hidden  it, 
which  they  hold  to.  The  hoary  theologies  which 
have  grown  up  around  it  are,  much  of  them,  quite 
beyond  our  modern  digestion.  We  wander  amongst 
them  in  a  reverent  freedom,  taking  out  of  them 
what  we  can  receive,  what  helps,  and  leaving  the  rest. 
So  it  is  with  the  Bible.  We  follow  Luther's  plan 
here.  He  held  its  inspired  part  to  be  what  inspired 
him.  We  moderns  have  a  wrong  way  of  reading  the 
Bible.  It  is  the  worst-used  book  in  the  world.  We 
have  chopped  it  up  into  verses  and  into  chapters, 
and  our  preachers  complete  the  business  of  dis- 
memberment by  singling  out  one  verse,  cutting  it 
off  from  the  rest,  and  making  it  the  basis  of  a  discourse 
on  things  in  general.  Was  ever  a  poor  book 
so  ill-used  ?  It  is  as  if  a  speaker  should  be  com- 
pelled to  stop  at  every  sentence,  while  somebody 
else  gets  up  and  starts  off  on  a  separate  disquisition 
on  that  sentence.  The  sermon  may  be  excellent  in 
other  ways,  but  don't  go  to  it  for  your  study  of  the 
Bible.  How  do  you  read  a  Pauline  epistle  ?  You 
will  make  no  sense  of  it  unless  you  read  it — as  its  first 
addressees  read  it  or  heard  it  read — from  end  to  end. 
Take  it  in  that  way,  to  see  what  the  man  is  driving  at. 
Have  you  ever,  reading  him  so,  savoured  the  fine, 
sardonic  irony  of  that  master  of  sarcasm  ?  He  writes 
to  the  self-satisfied  Corinthians :  *'  We  are  fools 
for  Christ's  sake,  but  ye  are  wise  ;   we  are  weak,  but 

S7 


Faith's    Certainties 

ye  are  strong  ;  ye  are  honourable,  but  we  are 
despised."  "  We  know,  of  course,  that  we  poor 
apostles  are  nobodies  ;  it  is  to  you  Corinthians  one 
must  look  for  the  last  word  in  wisdom  !  "  That  is 
the  modern  English  of  it. 

That,  however,  is  a  digression.  We  are  talking 
of  the  Bible,  and  mainly  of  the  New  Testament,  as  a 
whole.  We  read  it  to-day  to  find  the  heart  of  it. 
We  pass  a  good  deal  of  it  by,  as  belonging  to  the  age 
it  was  written  in.  We  realise,  as  Burkitt,  that 
essentially  conservative  critic,  realises,  that  *'  the 
more  we  investigate  the  early  history  of  the  Christian 
Church  with  open  and  unprejudiced  eyes,  the  more 
we  find  ourselves  in  a  strange  world,  dominated  by 
fixed  ideas  that  are  not  our  fixed  ideas,  and  per- 
meated by  an  intellectual  atmosphere  quite  different 
from  ours."  There  is  much  in  Paul  we  do  not  accept. 
The  modern  woman  is  in  universal  revolt  against 
his  doctrine  of  woman.  We  study  some  of  his 
rabbinisms  with  an  amused  curiosity.  His  idea  of 
the  immediate  coming  of  Christ,  and  the  manner  of 
it,  has  been  falsified  by  history.  And  of  some  things 
in  the  Gospel  the  same  criticism  holds.  But  are  these 
things  the  heart  of  the  matter  ? 

Coleridge  said  that  he  valued  the  Bible  above  all 
other  books  because  it  found  him,  and  found  him  at 
the  deepest  part  of  his  nature.  The  heart  in  it 
spoke  to  the  heart  in  him.  And  what  is  the  heart  in 
it  ?  Read  the  Gospels — the  story  of  Christ's  hfe  ; 
read  the  Acts,  the  Epistles — the  story  of  Christ's 
Spirit  ;  and  what  is  the  note  there  all  through  ? 
It  is  the  story  of  holy  love  ;  of  what  that  love  is  in 
God  ;  of  what  it  can  be  in  man.  You  can  never 
bring  your  sin  there  without  it  being  reproved  and 

58 


The  Heart  of  Things 

shamed  ;  you  can  never  bring  your  burden  there 
without  it  being  lifted.  The  Cross  gives  us  Ormuzd 
and  Ahriman,  not  in  cloudy  epic,  but  in  actual 
history ;  goodness  fighting  evil,  not  with  earthly 
weapons,  but  spiritual ;  fighting,  by  suffering,  by 
giving,  by  loving,  by  dying.  And  you,  in  your  turn, 
get  the  heart  of  this  by  trying  it,  by  living  it.  You 
find  what  loving  is  by  loving,  what  forgiveness  is  by 
forgiving,  what  the  Cross  of  Calvary  is  by  the  cross 
in  your  own  soul.  You  become  an  initiate  of 
Christianity  by  the  Christian  experience,  and  by  that 
alone. 

Though  Christ  in  Joseph's  town 
A  thousand  times  were  born. 

Till  He  is  born  in  thee 
Thy  soul  is  still  forlorn. 

The  Cross  on  Golgotha 
Can  never  save  thy  soul ; 

The  cross  in  thine  own  heart 
Alone  can  make  thee  whole. 

It  is  here,  in  the  cross  of  holy,  sacrificing  love  in 
God,  in  the  cross  of  holy  sacrificing  love  in  your  own 
soul,  that  you  reach  the  world's  deepest  secret,  that 
you  find  the  heart  of  things. 


59 


VI 

LIFE  AND  TIME 

There  is  nothing  more  familiar  to  us  than  the  idea 
of  time,  and  nothing  more  obscure.  Time  !  we  carry 
it  about  with  us  in  the  watch  that  bulges  our  waist- 
coat pocket ;  it  beams  at  us  in  the  face  of  the 
grandfather's  clock  ;  it  shrieks  out  of  the  siren  that 
wakes  the  factory  worker.  It  is  in  all  the  dates,  in 
all  the  seasons  ;  we  eat  and  sleep  by  it ;  we  measure 
our  age  by  it.  The  busy  man  says  time  is  money ;  the 
lazy  man  exhausts  himself  in  efforts  to  kill  it.  In 
Christmas  poems  and  pictures  it  figures  as  the  old 
man  with  the  scythe  ;  the  old  man  who,  were  we 
never  so  fast,  will  overtake  and  finish  us.  And  yet  if 
time  catches  us  we  never  catch  it.  It  is  the  most 
elusive  of  entities.  We  can  neither  see  it,  nor  hear 
it,  nor  hold  it.  The  present  moment  !  You  can 
never  put  your  hand  on  it.  As  you  think  it,  it  is 
gone.  Analyse  a  moment,  and  you  find  it  has  a  past, 
a  present  and  a  future.  And  that  middle  term  is 
never  there.  In  the  fact  of  realising  it  has  become  a 
past.  Many  of  our  common  notions  about  time  are 
a  great  delusion.  What  ordinarily  goes  under  that 
name  is  really  something  else.  And,  as  we  propose 
to  show,  the  forgetting  of  that  fact  has  been  the  cause 
of  some  singular  and  momentous  errors,  errors  which 
have  spread  into  rehgion,  into  theology,  and  into  our 
whole   conduct   of  life.     Some   clearer  thinking   on 

60 


Life  and   Time 

this  question  should  help  us  to  a  truer  view  of  matters 
that  concern  us  all. 

What  we  call  time  is,  in  many  directions,  simply 
movement.  It  is  the  putting  forth  and  the  expendi- 
ture of  energy.  That  is  what  our  clock-time  amounts 
to.  The  hands  are  going  round  because  a  spring  has 
been  wound  up,  or  because  weights  are  exercising 
their  downward  strain.  Our  earth's  movement,  as  a 
recorder  of  time,  means  exactly  the  same  thing.  It 
is  just  so  much  work,  the  result  of  so  much  motor 
force.  It  is  work  related  to  space  and  to  movement 
in  it.  It  is  the  same  thing  when  we  talk  of  our  age. 
When  we  speak  of  our  years,  and  the  effect  they  have 
had  upon  us,  carrying  us  from  youth  to  mid-hfe,  and 
from  mid-life  to  old  age,  what  is  it  we  really  mean  ? 
Time,  regarded  as  a  sort  of  metaphysical  entity,  has 
really  nothing  to  do  with  all  this.  The  factor  in  the 
business  is  just  life  ;  the  incessant  growth,  decay, 
replacement  of  cells,  of  tissue,  of  bone,  of  muscle  ; 
the  incessant  work  upon  us  of  events,  experiences, 
ideas.  It  is  an  affair  of  movement,  of  biological  and 
mental  movement,  of  the  expenditure  of  energy  in 
these  departments.  And  when  we  pass  from  the 
individual  to  the  race,  to  humanity  as  a  whole,  we  are 
met  with  the  same  fact.  We  talk  of  the  stone  age, 
of  antiquity,  of  the  mediaeval  period,  of  the  Renais- 
sance and  so  on,  as  though  everything  here,  events, 
manners,  ideas,  had  to  do  with  the  mysterious 
something  we  call  time.  Such  habits,  such  Hmit- 
ations  of  knowledge,  such  barbarisms,  we  aver, 
belong  to  that  age.  We  say  "  the  stone  age  could  not 
have  produced  a  Shakespeare,"  ''  the  Reformation 
was  a  birth  of  time  "  ;  we  talk  of  the  Zeitgeist  or 
''  time  spirit."     It  is  a  way  of  speaking,  which  has  its 

6i 


Faith^s  Certainties 

uses  so  long  as  we  know  what  we  mean.  Only,  let 
us  remember,  it  is  not  an  accurate  way.  What  was 
going  on  in  the  stone  age,  or  in  medisevalism,  or  at 
the  Reformation,  was  not,  fundamentally,  an  affair 
of  the  clock  ;  it  was  throughout  an  affair  of  vitalism  ; 
of  the  condition  of  body  and  brains  ;  of  the  working 
there  of  the  vital  processes  ;  of  the  height  to  which 
the  vital  forces  in  these  bodies  and  souls  had  reached ; 
of  the  quality  and  amount  of  the  inner  energy  which 
was  then  being  expended.  That  is  the  real  bottom 
fact.  When  we  speak  of  these  as  "  times "  we 
are  simply  adding  to  the  fact  an  idea  of  our  own 
minds,  an  idea  whose  illusiveness  only  becomes 
truly  apparent  to  us  when  we  try  to  analyse  it. 

The  extent  to  which  this  idea,  on  some  important 
subjects,  has  played  tricks  with  us,  may  be  illus- 
trated, as  a  starting  point,  by  the  way  in  which  we 
have  been  accustomed  to  contrast  time  and  eternity. 
We  have  thought  of  the  two  as  something  different — 
profoundly,  solemnly  different.  We  speak  with  awe 
of  the  transition  from  one  to  the  other.  With  time 
we  are,  or  think  we  are,  on  familiar  terms.  We  are 
quite  at  home  with  it ;  it  is  a  business  proposition  ; 
we  can  make  jokes  about  it.  Nobody  jokes  about 
eternity.  The  thought  of  it  strikes  on  the  soul  with 
the  force  of  all  that  is  tremendous.  It  is  religion's 
final  word,  its  most  august  appeal.  And  there  is  a 
true  instinct  in  all  that,  though  the  thought  con- 
nected with  it  is  a  confused  one.  Let  us  try  and 
clear  it  a  little.  Here,  for  instance,  is  a  simple 
proposition.  We  think  of  the  living  as  in  time,  of 
the  dead  as  in  eternity.  But  if  they  are  there,  still 
living,  that  simple  fact  abolishes  by  itself  the 
distinction  between  the  two.     If  the  dead  are  living 

62 


Life  and  Time 

now,  they  are  in  time  as  much  as  we  are  ;  they  are 
under  our  own  conditions  of  duration.  What  really 
has  happened  to  them  is  not  a  change  made  of  the 
difference  between  time  and  eternity.  The  change 
is  one  which  these  terms  do  not  represent.  It  is 
a  change  in  their  organism,  in  the  conditions  under 
which  that  organism  is  acting,  in  the  circumstances 
by  which  it  is  surrounded.  What  we  are  really 
talking  about  is,  we  say,  no  question  of  time  and 
eternity,  but  a  question  of  life,  of  its  possible  growths, 
its  possible  transformations. 

Where  our  thinking  has  so  often  gone  wrong 
here  has  been  in  concentrating  it  so  often  on  an 
idea  of  duration,  instead  of  on  what  really  matters — 
to  wit,  the  quality  of  our  life.  Duration,  such  as 
we  ordinarily  conceive  it,  is  not  at  all  the  main  point 
here.  For  a  Sir  Isaac  Newton  and  for  a  Hottentot 
the  clock  may  be  ticking  out  the  same  number  of 
hours  and  minutes.  They  are  living,  we  may  say, 
in  the  same  time.  But  is  that  to  say  anything  real 
about  them  ?  We  see  that  it  is  the  quality  of  their 
life  that  really  matters.  Put  these  two  in  what  you 
call  time  or  in  what  you  call  eternity,  and  still 
it  is  just  the  quality  that  matters.  This  is  where  the 
question  touches  religion  in  its  highest  point.  When 
the  Scripture  speaks  to  us  of  the  divine  life,  of  the 
eternal  life  we  can  find  in  God,  we  are  here  not  on 
a  matter  of  duration.  We  are  on  another  theme 
altogether — on  that  of  the  intensity,  of  the  elevation, 
of  the  essential  quality  of  being.  That  "  eternal"  is 
now,  for  us  here  just  as  much  as  in  any  possible  future 
state.  We  get  to  it,  not  by  any  ticking  of  the  clock, 
but  by  processes  going  on  within  us,  by  our  entering 
into  relations  with  the  highest  that  there  is. 

63 


Faith^s   Certainties 

This  confusion  in  our  time-thinking,  when  we  look 
into  it,  is  seen  to  be  at  the  root  of  some  of  our  acutest 
theological  controversies.  Take,  for  instance,  the 
question  of  religion  and  history.  It  was  the  conten- 
tion of  Lessing,  and  after  him  of  the  Hegelians,  that  a 
final  religion  could  not  be  one  based  on  certain  alleged 
historical  facts.  The  facts  here,  given  as  occurring 
in  the  far  past,  might  be  mis-stated,  or  they  might 
not  have  occurred  at  all.  We  have  the  same  thing 
to-day  in  the  assaults  on  the  historicity  of  Jesus. 
The  final  religion,  we  are  told,  must  have  a  surer 
foundation  than  this ;  it  must  rest  on  spiritual 
principles,  on  eternal  ideas,  which  range  above  the 
mutations  of  time.  Well,  you  may  admit  the 
spiritual  principles,  and  the  eternal  ideas,  but  they 
will  be  no  good  to  you  by  themselves.  You  still 
cannot  get  on  without  the  history,  and  for  the  reason 
that  the  only  way  by  which  they  could  come  to  us 
was  by  being  lived.  For  us  mortals  facts  are  before 
ideas ;  you  must  live  before  you  can  think. 
Religion  is  only  possible  as  it  exists  in  personalities, 
personalities  developed,  not  by  time,  but  by  the 
process  of  life.  It  was  not  mere  ideas,  but  the  life 
in  those  personalities  that  set  religion  going,  and 
it  was  the  highest  life,  as  exhibited  in  Christ,  that 
set  the  highest  religion  going.  Where  Lessing  and 
the  idealists  after  him  have  really  helped  us  is  in 
the  view  that  religious  history  has  no  isolated  facts  ; 
that  revelation,  incarnation  and  atonement  are  not 
events  and  transactions  that  belong  to  one  period, 
or  even  to  one  Person,  however  they  may  be 
culminated  there,  however  they  may  receive  there 
the  divinest  illustration  ;  but  that  they  enter  into 
the  whole  structure  and  history  of  humanity,  eternal 

64 


Life  and  Time 

ideas  made  manifest  in  flesh.  It  is  because 
Christianity  has  exhibited  this  process  in  its  highest 
form,  and  has  in  Christ  summed  up  the  whole  sequence, 
that  it  stands  as  the  rehgion  of  humanity,  the  eternal 
religion. 

Readers  of  Bergson's  "  Time  and  Free  Will  ** 
will  remember  how  he  exposes  the  fallacy  of  the 
determinists  who  deduce  their  study  of  the  action  of 
the  will  always  from  a  study  of  the  act  as  finished, 
whereas  the  only  proper  way  of  answering  the 
question  is  from  studying  the  action  while  it  is 
actually  in  progress  ;  a  study  from  which  a  quite 
different  conclusion  is  reached.  But  there  is 
another  fallacy  of  the  determinists  in  reference  to 
time  which  also  needs  exposure.  It  is  that  of  their 
doctrine  of  cause  and  effect,  of  antecedent  and  conse- 
quent. Hume  and  the  materialists  who  have 
followed  him  have  proceeded  on  the  assumption 
that  all  that  is  in  the  effect  is  already  in  the  cause. 
The  effect  was  simply  a  following  in  time  of  what 
already  lay  in  the  antecedent.  Hence  their  con- 
clusion, that  matter  being,  in  their  view,  the  ante- 
cedent to  mind  and  spirit,  all  the  spiritual  was 
contained  in  matter,  was  explainable  by  matter 
and  shared  the  fate  of  matter.  A  moment's 
glance  at  the  facts  should  be  enough  to  dispel 
these  ideas.  If  things  were  so  there  would  be 
no  difference  between  the  cause  and  the  effect. 
But  it  is  precisely  the  difference  between  them  that 
first  strikes  us.  In  the  effect  a  something  new  has 
emerged  which  was  not  there  before.  That  is  why 
we  call  it  an  effect,  why  we  separate  it  as  a  result 
from  what  was  there  before.  Something  has  been 
added.     The     creative     process,     the     evolutionary 

65 


Faith*s   Certainties 

process  proceeds  always  by  this  "  something  added," 
a  new  draft  on  the  hidden  resources  of  the  universe. 
To  say  that  when  spirit  is  developed  in  matter  it  is 
matter  and  nothing  more,  is  one  of  those  gratuitous 
assumptions  which  a  truer  philosophy  is  already 
learning  to  put  finally  on  one  side. 

This  time-question,  on  its  philosophical  side,  is 
then,  we  see,  sufficiently  productive.  There  are 
many  more  sides  of  it  bearing  on  doctrinal  and 
speculative  matters  which  we  might  discuss.  But 
we  must  leave  them,  in  order  to  find  room  for  one  or 
two  of  those  practical  conclusions  which,  perhaps, 
to  most  of  us,  come  more  closely  home.  Why,  to 
take  one  of  these,  is  it  that  in  reviewing  our  past 
we  are  so  apt  to  pass  on  it  a  disparaging  judg- 
ment ?  The  aged  Jacob,  standing  before  Pharaoh, 
says  of  his  past  :  "  Few  and  evil  have  been  the 
days  and  years  of  my  Hfe  !  "  It  is  a  summary 
which  the  aged  in  their  life-re\dew  are  so  apt  to 
make.  Is  it  a  just  one  ?  Or  does  it  not  come 
from  the  fact  that  our  pains  rather  than  our 
pleasures  live  in  our  remembrance,  and  give  to  them 
an  altogether  disproportionate  importance  ?  Our 
troubles  imprint  themselves  on  the  memory  more 
deeply  than  our  joys.  You  ?re  so  vividly  conscious 
of  a  toothache.  But  who  records,  for  himself  or 
others,  the  weeks  and  months  when  he  had  no  tooth- 
ache ?  Who  takes  note  of  the  long  succeeding  days 
when  he  slept  soundly,  when  he  awoke  fit  and  well, 
ate  with  appetite,  saw  with  his  eyes,  heard  with  his 
ears  all  the  world's  pleasant  sights  and  sounds, 
realised  in  a  thousand  ways  a  general  sense  of  well- 
being,  of  the  deep  joy  of  existence  ?  Father  Jacob 
had    had    more    good    days    than    ovil    ones.     His 

66 


/ 


Life  and  Time 

memory  was  at  fault.  That  is  the  matter  with  us  all. 
Had  it  been  otherwise,  had  the  sum  of  evil  for  man 
surpassed  his  sum  of  good,  the  race  would  long  ago 
have  ceased  to  exist. 

Those  who  want  to  make  most  of  their  time 
will  think  of  it  as  capital,  and  will  use  it  as  such. 
Whatever  else  we  have  lacked  we  have  had  this, 
and  it  is  much.  When  this  year  is  completed  we 
shall  have  had  just  as  much  of  it  as  a  Rothschild 
or  a  Rockefeller.  We  have  all  been  millionaires  of 
minutes.  And  here,  as  with  the  capital  we  call 
cash,  there  are  two  ways  of  dealing  with  it,  the  way 
of  thriftless  spending  and  the  way  of  productive  use. 
There  is  no  more  searching  question  than  this  : 
*'  What  have  we  done  with  our  hours  ?  "  There  are 
dozens  of  ways  of  spending  them,  the  only  return  for 
which  is  a  sense  of  exhaustion,  of  mere  wastage, 
and  of  desolating  vacuity.  There  is  no  poverty  so 
squalid  as  that  of  the  time-spendthrift.  The  poverty 
here  is  of  body  and  soul.  In  honest  labour,  on  the 
contrary,  you  have  not  only  the  present  joy  it  offers, 
but  the  fact  that  it  is  an  investment  which,  for  all  the 
future,  brings  in  its  dividends.  To  learn  to  do  things 
is  to  strengthen  our  life,  to  broaden  in  all  directions 
its  acreage  of  possibility.  We  ought  to  abolish  the 
idler,  whether  at  the  top  or  the  bottom  of  the  social 
scale,  in  order  to  give  the  poor  fellow  a  taste  of  life's 
real  flavour.  The  best  training  we  know  of,  a  training 
which  should  become  universal,  is  that  of  some  of 
the  American  popular  universities,  where  the  students 
earn  their  bread  by  daily  hours  of  manual  labour — 
in  the  fields,  the  gardens,  the  carpenter's  shop — with 
certain  other  daily  hours  for  the  mental  cultures.  To 
get  that  training  should  be  every  man's  birthright, 

67 


Faith's   Certainties 

and  every  woman's.  A  robust  physical  vigour 
put  into  the  brain's  work  ;  a  well-stored  brain  direct- 
ing the  body's  work — here  is  your  combination  for 
a  full  and  wholesome  life.  Your  mechanical  task 
ceases  to  be  mechanical  when  a  full  mind  is  behind  it. 
As  the  body  swings  axe -or  hammer,  the  soul  is 
exulting  in  all  its  poetry,  its  idealism,  its  finest 
emotions.  In  return  the  toughened  body  brings  to 
the  mental  discipline  all  the  glow  of  its  strength. 
The  two  in  their  happy  union  help  each  other  to  all 
the  highest  that  is  there. 

Time's  most  fascinating  problem  for  us  is  that  of 
its  ending.  As  the  years  close  in  upon  us  we  seem 
afloat,  alone  in  our  frail  bark,  on  a  river  with  a 
cataract  below,  whose  growing  roar  warns  us  of  the 
approaching,  inevitable  plunge.  What  is  to  come 
after  ?  Here,  as  we  have  said,  the  question  is  not 
what  time  or  what  eternity  will  do  with  us,  it  is  what 
life  will  do  with  us.  Has  our  personality  that 
within  it,  and  that  without  it,  which  will  carry  it 
through  ?  That  the  mind  of  man,  alone  of  all 
created  things  in  this  world,  contemplates  death, 
foresees  it,  adjusts  itself  to  it  ;  above  all,  carries  to  it 
an  invincible  forward  look,  seems  evidence  that  it 
has  deahngs  with  death  that  are  quite  other  than 
physical.  Its  instinct  is  with  Heraclitus  :  "  There 
await  men,  after  death,  things  other  than  they 
look  for  or  expect."  The  clearest  minds  seem  here 
to  have  the  fullest  assurance.  Said  Goethe  in  his 
old  age  :  '*  At  the  age  of  seventy-five  one  must, 
of  course,  think  something  of  death.  But  the 
thought  never  gives  me  the  least  uneasiness  ;  for  I 
am  fully  persuaded  that  our  spirit  is  a  being  of  a 
nature    quite    indestructible,    and    that    it    actually 

68 


Life  and   Time 

continues  from  eternity  to  eternity."  After  all,  as 
we  have  said,  for  one  end  of  life  as  for  the  other,  the 
main  thing  is  not  a  question  of  mere  duration,  it  is 
one  of  the  quality  of  being.  If  we  are  in  harmony 
with  that  Divine  Will  which  is  the  nature  of  things, 
the  mere  continuance  question  will  not  trouble  us. 
We  fall  asleep  at  night  quite  easily  ;  it  is  a  pleasur- 
able sensation.  We  are  waked  in  the  morning  by 
a  power  not  our  own.  And  we  can  fall  asleep  in  that 
greater  manner  with  an  equal  composure,  an  equal 
trust  in  that  larger  power.  Such  a  nature  accepts 
Hoffding's  verdict.  The  exhortation,  "  Take  no 
thought  for  the  morrow"  can  be  applied  with  far 
greater  justification  to  the  life  after  death  than  to 
our  attitude  towards  the  actual  morrow  of  this  actual 
life.  To  know  God  now  is  eternal  life.  That  is 
enough  for  our  "  now."  We  know  it  is  a  life 
divine,  and  its  finest  fruit  is  a  perfect  trust  for  all  the 
future  to  its  source  in  the  Eternal  Love. 


69 


VII 

WHAT  IS  LEFT 

The  world  is  very  keen  to-day — keener,  perhaps, 
than  ev^er  it  was  before — on  gaining,  on  winning, 
on  accumulating.  We  are  all  so  enthusiastic  about 
growth,  whether  it  be  of  our  fortune,  or  our  know- 
ledge, or  our  baby.  We  like  the  movement  upward, 
the  ampler  air,  the  sense  of  higher  powers,  of  widen- 
ing influence.  Growth  is  the  parent,  the  feeder  of 
optimism.  It  is  a  good  world  so  long  as  we  are 
"  making  good  "  in  it.  But  life  has  another  side, 
to  which  the  world  has  never  yet  learned  to 
accustom  itself.  It  is  easy  to  make  a  philosophy  of 
winning.  What  we  are  yet  in  want  of  is  a  proper 
philosophy  of  losing.  Here  it  is  that  nature  seems 
to  turn  cynic.  She  gives  us  our  httle  run,  and  then 
reverses  the  engine  and  turns  it  the  other  way. 
Side  by  side  with  her  system  of  gifts  and  largess  is  her 
system  of  denudation,  of  taking  away.  She  creates 
and  fosters  ;  then  smites  and  destroys.  And  it  is  of 
that  process  that  all  our  pessimism  is  born.  For 
this  business  makes  a  deeper  impression  on  us  than 
the  other.  The  early  world  had  found  this  out. 
Says  Livy  :  Segnius  homines  bona  quam  mala 
sentiunt  (men  do  not  feel  their  good  things  so  keenly 
as  their  evil  ones).  A  cut  finger  will  make  more 
impression  on  you  than  a  sugar-plum.  A  loss  seems 
to  go  deeper  into  your  mind  than  a  gain.     It  is,  we 

70 


What  is  Left 

say,  out  of  their  losses  that  men's  pessimism  is  born. 
Bjornson  lost  his  belief  in  immortality  because  of 
the  apparent  shrinkage  in  values  of  later  life.  If,  he 
says,  we  went  on  growing  all  the  time,  we  might 
believe  in  a  progress  which  death  did  not  prevent. 
But  we  are  worn  out  before  we  die.  We  are  growing 
up  to  fifty  or  sixty,  and  then  we  decay  till  all  that 
makes  life  great  and  valuable  is  taken  from  us. 

'Tis  a  common  complaint  which  every  age  has 
echoed.  Anacreon  had  uttered  it  years  ago.  Our 
later  day  has  been  vociferous  on  this  subject.  Says 
Benjamin  Constant  :  "  When  the  age  of  passion  is 
over,  what  else  can  one  desire  except  to  escape  from 
life  with  the  least  possible  pain  ?  "  James  Mill 
found  life  a  poor  affair  after  the  first  age  of  eager 
sensation  and  curiosity  was  over.  Amiel,  at  forty, 
finds  all  his  early  hopes  fled  ;  nothing  before  him  but 
solitude  and  "  a  death  in  the  desert."  Schopen- 
hauer likens  life  to  a  show  at  a  country  fair.  We 
are  interested  and  amused  with  the  conjurer's  tricks 
when  we  see  them  for  the  first  time.  But  when  we 
have  seen  them  several  times  over  we  grow  weary 
and  disgusted  with  the  business.  As  we  listen  to 
these  wailings  our  wonder  is  not  at  the  poverty 
of  life,  but  at  the  poverty  of  the  conception  of 
it  which  is  here  presented.  We  are  sure  it  is  a 
wrong  one,  if  only  for  our  inward  certainty  that 
despair  is  a  psychological  mistake.  '*  Despair,"  says 
Vauvenargues,  **  is  the  worst  of  our  errors."  We 
are  sure  of  it,  and  sure  also  that  a  philosophy  built 
on  "  the  worst  of  our  errors "  must  be  a  false 
philosophy. 

Before  we  acquiesce  in  notions  of  this  sort  it  is 
worth  while  looking  a  little  more  closely  into  the 

71 


Faith's   Certainties 

matter  ;  to  inquire  whether  nature's  way  here  is, 
after  all,  simply  a  destructive  way ;  whether  her 
takings  may,  after  all,  not  turn  out  to  be  a  subtle  way 
of  giving.  It  is  worth  while  to  inquire  whether  she 
ever  does  destroy  anything  ;  to  inquire  into  what  she 
leaves  behind ;  whether  we  know  enough  of  her 
method  of  decay  to  speak  of  it  as  a  confession  of  her 
poverty  of  resource  ;  whether  under  her  system  our 
losses  do  not  leave  us  richer  than  before. 

On  a  mere  surface  view  we  come  upon  some 
interesting  facts.  We  see,  to  begin  with,  that  nature 
has  a  tolerably  full  treasury,  even  of  material  things. 
Man  is  her  most  wasteful  child,  but  when  he  has  done 
his  worst  he  seems  a  long  remove  from  the  bottom 
of  her  basket.  We  are  reminded  here  of  what 
Christopher  North  says  of  the  harvest  of  the  sea. 
In  the  "  Noctes  "  he  makes  the  shepherd  say  :  "  I 
never  look  at  the  sea  without  lamenting  the  back- 
wardness of  its  agriculture.  Were  every  eatable 
land  animal  extinct,  the  human  race  could  dine  and 
sup  out  o'  the  ocean  till  a'  eternity."  We  denude 
the  soil  of  its  fertile  elements  by  a  wasteful  tillage 
and  the  hillsides  of  their  forests  by  an  equal  reck- 
lessness. But  is  this  new  bareness  all  a  taking, 
a  vacuity  ?  Far  from  it.  While  this  is  going  on 
nature  drops  something  into  the  human  mind  ;  drops 
an  idea.  An  idea  of  economy,  for  one  thing  ;  to 
take  care  of  what  is  left  of  our  forests  ;  to  plant 
new  ones  ;  to  repair  the  waste  in  the  soil  by  imparting 
new  fertilising  elements.  Then  further  the  idea, 
after  scratching  the  surface  of  her  treasures,  to  look 
deeper  into  them,  in  search  of  hidden  powers,  a 
search  which  is  being  marvellously  rewarded. 

One  of  the  surprising  things  which  this  search  has 

72 


What  is  Left 

brought  to  light  is  the  fact  that  actually  in  nature 
nothing  is  destroyed.  Your  fire  burns  itself  out. 
The  fuel  which  composed  it  has  disappeared.  It  is 
gone,  you  say.  Yes,  but  it  has  not  gone  far.  Not 
one  atom  of  it  is  really  lost.  It  has  simply  changed 
its  form.  If  a  search  were  made,  all  its  equivalents 
could  be  recovered.  So  when  man  has  denuded  his 
forests,  exhausted  his  soil,  spent  his  resources,  with 
utmost  prodigality,  he  has,  after  all,  only  touched 
his  revenues.  His  banker,  nature,  has  taken  care  of 
them.  Her  strong-room  is  crammed  with  securities. 
The  very  things  we  have  been  spending  have  gone 
there.  All  we  have  burned,  or  used,  or  misused,  are 
still  in  her  hands.  She  is  as  rich  as  ever  and  we  are 
rich  in  her.  The  seeming  losses  have  been  gains.  A 
big  catastrophe,  such  as  a  burnt-out  city,  as  at  San 
Francisco  or  Chicago,  has  not  destroyed  anything 
really,  finally,  but  it  has  created  something.  It  has 
restarted  the  citizens  with  a  new  energy  and  a  fund 
of  fresh  knowledge.  Disaster  has  sharpened  wits. 
It  has  set  men  on  to  the  survey  of  causes  ;  of  bad 
forms  of  building,  of  bad  arrangements  to  be  hence- 
forth avoided  ;  of  new  safeguards  to  be  provided  ; 
of  better  ways  of  handling  the  raw  elements, 
of  subduing  their  faculty  of  revolt,  of  increasing 
their  capacity  of  service.  Here  we  see  how 
nature's  taking  away  has  turned  out  to  be  her  subtle 
way  of  giving. 

Note,  too,  another  result  of  these  losses.  They 
bring  to  us,  if  we  rightly  accept  them,  a  new  and 
keener  appreciation  of  what  is  left.  One  of  Wesley's 
earliest  experiences  was  that  of  the  fire  which 
destroyed  his  father's  vicarage  at  Epworth.  He 
tells  how,  after  his  own  narrow  escape  from  death, 

73 


Faith  s  Certainties 

his  father,  finding  all  his  family  around  him  un- 
hurt, thanked  God  for  His  preserving  mercies.  He 
had  lost  his  home,  but  his  dear  ones  were  all  there. 
He  felt  rich,  as  he  had  never  felt  before,  in  the 
treasures  he  had  left.  And,  indeed,  'tis  one  of  the 
finest,  healthiest  of  mental  exercises,  in  the  midst  of 
life's  deprivations,  to  remember  what  is  left.  So 
much  is  gone  ;  but  when  you  go  over  the  sum  of 
what  remains,  how  immense  the  account  that  is  left 
to  your  credit  !  When  that  touch  of  gout  worries  you 
it  is  well  to  note  that  your  eyesight  is  good  and 
your  hearing  perfect.  You  cannot  walk,  but  you  can 
read.  Says  Isaak  Walton  :  "  Every  misery  that  I 
miss  is  a  new  mercy,  and  therefore  let  us  be  thank- 
ful." That  is  not  merely  piety  ;  it  is  excellent  good 
sense.  There  is  always  a  giving  with  the  taking. 
The  Duke  of  Gloucester,  brother  of  George  III., 
remarked  once  to  Horace  Walpole,  whose  niece  he  had 
married  :  "  I  thank  God  that  I  have  such  bad 
health.  I  was  very  ambitious,  but  I  have  had  time 
to  reflect,  and  now  I  have  no  view  of  doing  what  is 
not  right."  It  sounds  a  curious  confession  of  faith, 
but  it  meant  all  this  to  the  man  himself.  He  knew 
he  had  received  more  than  he  had  lost  ;  received  it 
in  losing.  People  find  their  mission,  their  bit  of 
genuine  life-work,  out  of  their  troubles.  Lamartine 
records  of  Mme.  Roland  that  the  unhappiness  of  her 
early  married  hfe  led  her  to  devote  herself  to  works 
of  widest  charity.  "  She  revenged  herself  on  the 
destiny  which  refused  her  personal  happiness  by 
consecrating  her  life  to  the  well-being  of  others." 
Would  Wesley  have  proved  the  apostle  he  was  had 
his  domestic  affairs  been  brighter  ?  Was  not  his 
failure  in  that  direction  part  of  his  immense  success 

74 


What  is  Left 

in  that  other  ?     Out  of  that  personal  void  what  a 
fulness  did  he  make  for  others  ! 

Life,  we  say,  by  its  very  deprivations  is  continu- 
ally teaching  us,  and  thereby  enriching  us.  Its  chief 
lesson  here  is  to  lay  up  in  our  treasury  the  stock 
which  is  least  assailable.  In  times  of  disturbance 
people  often  convert  their  property  into  easily 
portable  forms  ;  forms  such  as  they  can  carry  with 
them.  In  this  hurly-burly  of  a  world  we  do  well 
to  follow  that  method ;  to  have  our  chief  treasure 
with  us,  in  us,  where  we  can,  at  any  time,  put  our  hand 
on  it.  When  everything  outside  is  adrift,  when  the 
world  of  circumstance  is  full  of  menace,  then  is  the 
time  to  fall  back  on  our  inner  accumulations.  Well 
for  us  if  they  are  large,  and  of  the  durable  sort. 
Let  us  cite  here  an  example  of  what  we  mean. 
Have  our  readers,  we  wonder,  read  anything  of  Edgar 
Quinet  ?  His  *'  Lettres  d'Exil "  are  an  inspiring 
revelation  of  a  truly  noble  soul.  Quinet,  consummate 
scholar,  profound  thinker,  with  a  soul  athirst  for 
truth  and  righteousness,  was  one  of  the  proscribed 
of  Napoleon  III.'s  coup  d'etat.  For  twenty  years 
he  lived  the  life  of  an  exile  from  his  beloved  France, 
refusing  all  the  tempting  offers  made  him  to  return 
to  his  home  and  to  imperial  favour,  at  the  price  of 
his  conscience.  During  that  period  he  was  a 
constant  sufferer  ;  homeless,  almost  friendless.  He 
could  get  no  publisher  in  France  to  dare  to  publish 
his  writings.  After  that  twenty  years,  after  Sedan 
and  the  fall  of  the  Empire,  he  comes  back  to  France, 
to  find  it  in  the  grip  of  the  enemy.  He  endures  the 
siege  of  Paris,  and  his  last  five  years  are  spent  in  the 
struggle  to  re-create  his  country,  to  lift  it  from  the 
abyss  into  which  it  had  fallen.     What  a  life  !  you  say. 

75 


Faith's   Certainties 

Twenty  years  of  exile,  with  such  a  return  from  exile  ! 
And  yet  hear  his  own  account  of  his  hfe.  He  had 
been  happy  in  that  seeming  desolate  period  ;  happy 
because  his  conscience  was  clear,  because  he  had 
cultivated  to  the  best  he  knew  his  inner  self ; 
because  he  had  laboured  for  the  truth  and  for  the 
right.  "  It  is  certain,"  he  says,  "  that  we  reach 
happiness  only  through  our  reason  and  our  will. 
I  was  unhappy  in  my  youth.  But  since  I  took 
possession  of  myself  all  has  been  different.  I 
understand  and  I  feel  that  the  gift  of  hfe  is  a  great 
benefaction.  One  receives  all  the  universe  in 
usufruct.  The  one  thing  is  to  know  how  to  use  it 
and  make  profit  of  it.  I  have  grown  happier  as  I 
have  grown  older."  From  this  man,  outwardly 
almost  everything  had  been  taken.  But  in  taking, 
as  he  best  knew,  everything  had  been  given. 

Here  comes  in  a  question  of  education.  While, 
in  nature's  beneficent  order,  so  many  of  our  seeming 
losses  turn  out  to  be  gains,  it  must  not  be  forgotten 
that  we  lose  a  good  many  things  we  ought  to  have 
retained.  A  once  famous  professor  remarked  in 
our  hearing  to  his  students  :  "  Gentlemen,  if  you 
knew  all  the  Sanscrit  that  I  have  forgotten  you 
would  be  very  well  set  up  there."  It  seemed  a 
pity  that  he  should  have  learned  just  to  forget. 
Why  do  we  lose  so  much  of  our  schoolboy  and 
student  lore  ?  For  one  thing,  so  much  of  it  was 
quite  useless.  Says  Sydney  Smith  :  "  I  beheve 
while  I  was  a  boy  at  school  I  made  above  ten  thousand 
Latin  verses  ;  and  no  man  in  his  senses  would  dream 
in  after  life  of  ever  making  another."  It  is  certain 
that  whatever  our  early  acquirements,  whether  the 
making  of  Latin   verses  or  anything  else,   we  shall 

76 


What  is  Left 

infallibly  lose  them,  unless  they  are  kept  in  view, 
and  in  some  sort  of  practice,  in  after  life.  It  would 
be  the  biggest  sum  that  arithmetic  ever  tackled  to 
calculate  the  time  that  has  been  lost  in  putting  into 
pupils'  brains  the  things  that  will  fall  out  again 
in  after  years.  Have  we  not  here  one  of  the  first 
principles  of  a  true  education,  for  ourselves  and 
the  nation  at  large  ?  Surely  what  should  be  taught, 
whether  in  the  village  school  or  in  the  university, 
is  what  the  learner  can  use.  Latin  and  Greek  are 
all  right  for  the  men  who  will  want  them  for  their 
life  work.  Nine-tenths  of  those  who  are  spending 
years  over  them  will  never  use  them,  and  will  make 
all  speed  to  forget  them.  Let  those  years  be  given 
to  German  and  French,  and  they  will  possess  in  them 
living  forces  of  a  living  world.  What  is  a  real 
education  for  our  workers,  except  that  which  fits 
them  for  their  work,  whether  it  be  housewifery  for 
the  girl,  or  the  mastery  of  a  craft  for  the  growing 
lad  ?  We  keep  what  we  use  ;  of  the  rest,  what  is 
left  is  a  debris  that  is  hardly  worth  houseroom. 

After  all,  the  great  education  is  life  itself.  If 
we  have  been  faithful  learners  in  that  school,  we 
shall  find  that  the  things  that  seem  gone  are  not 
really  gone.  They  always  leave  something  behind  ; 
there  is  never  a  real  void.  The  natural  process, 
within  us  and  without,  is,  in  fact,  a  distillation  of 
essences,  of  more  value  really  than  the  thing  in  bulk 
with  which  we  first  have  to  do.  That  is  why  the 
advance  into  life,  when  we  have  left  youth  and 
the  vigour  of  manhood  behind  us,  has  produced 
deposits  of  these  finer  essences  of  themselves,  that 
have  made  the  soul  so  much  richer  and  fuller  than 
before.     The    true    learners,    as   we    have   seen    in 

77 


Faith's   Certainties 

Quinet,  in  losing  the  material,  have  grasped  the 
spiritual,  the  one  enduring,  the  one  satisfying  thing. 
This,  which  happens  to  the  separate  soul,  is  what 
is  happening  in  religion,  the  soul's  great  feeder  and 
sustainer.  Modern  rehgion  has  witnessed  the  decay 
and  death  of  much  that  once  seemed  a  part  of  it.  As 
we  study  that  process  we  see  the  deep  truth  of  Carlyle's 
saying  :  "  The  old  never  dies  till  this  happens,  till 
all  the  soul  of  good  that  was  in  it  gets  itself  trans- 
formed into  the  practically  new."  You  compare  the 
theological  systems  of  the  seventeenth  century  with 
the  thought  of  to-day,  and  so  much  seems  to  have 
gone  that  you  are  apt  to  ask,  "  What  is  left  ?  "  With 
educated  minds  the  old  doctrine  of  Biblical  infalli- 
bility has  gone  as  completely  as  the  doctrine  of 
Church  infallibihty  which,  for  Protestantism,  it  had 
replaced.  The  elaborate  dogmatic  systems  of  that 
age  are  all  in  the  melting-pot.  We  look  at  all  these 
matters  from  a  new  standpoint  and  with  new  results. 
Have  we,  in  this  process,  lost  anything  ?  The  new 
science  of  the  world  shows  that  to  be  impossible. 
Nature  holds  all  she  has.  She  loses  nothing.  Her 
infinite  transformations  are  never  a  losing  game. 
And  we  may  be  sure  that  if  this  be  so  in  the  material 
world  it  is  not  less  so  in  the  spiritual.  The  scien- 
tific process,  the  critical  process,  the  philosophic 
process  that  have  been  at  work  in  religion  have 
given  more  than  they  have  taken.  Science  in  offering 
us  evolution  has  immeasurably  enriched  religious 
thought.  Philosophy  in  its  latest  phase  has  burst 
through  materialism  and  shown  man  as  a  spiritual 
being  in  a  spiritual  universe.  And  criticism  has  given 
us  a  Bible  which  is  more  than  ever  the  Book  of 
humanity,  the  inexhaustible  store-house  of  the  soul. 

78 


What  is   Left 

Christianity  is  being  distilled  to  its  essence,  as  an 
ultimate  force  which  you  can  transform  but  can 
never  destroy.  All  that  has  happened  and  is 
happening  in  this  sphere  makes  us  more  sure,  with 
Fichte,  that  "  Christianity  yet  carries  in  its  breast  a 
renovating  power  of  which  we  have  no  concep- 
tion. Hitherto  it  has  only  acted  on  individuals 
and  through  them  on  the  State  indirectly.  But 
whoever  can  appreciate  its  power,  whether  he  be 
a  believer  or  an  independent  thinker,  will  confess 
that  it  is  destined  some  day  to  become  the  inner 
organising  power  of  the  community  ;  and  that 
it  will  reveal  itself  to  the  world  in  all  the  depths  of 
its  ideas  and  the  full  richness  of  its  blessing." 

Pessimism,  we  have  said,  has  built  itself  on 
life's  losses,  its  denudations.  But  a  saner  philosophy 
revises  that  judgment.  It  discovers  nature  to  be  no 
such  cynic  as  has  been  imagined.  She  takes  that 
she  may  give.  She  withdraws  the  material  to  find 
room  for  the  spiritual.  No  loss  but  has  in  it  a  secret 
gain.  Goethe  has  put  into  Faust  her  final  word, 
"  We  bid  you  to  hope." 


79 


VIII 

MAN  THE  PROPHET 

Man  the  prophet  appears  to  have  been  busy  in 
that  role  ever  since  he  was  man,  and  he  is  quite  busy 
in  it  now.  There  are  prophets  in  Bond  Street  who 
will  read  your  future  in  your  hand ;  who  will 
exchange  your  gold  for  golden  predictions.  There 
are  loungers  at  tavern-bars,  and  "  places  where  they 
bet,"  who  are  prodigal  of  "  certs "  and  "  sure 
things."  Mr.  Baxter  is  no  longer  with  us,  but  there 
are  disciples  of  his  school  who  are  in  all  the  secrets 
of  the  Apocalypse,  and  can  tell  you  from  Daniel  the 
exact  date  of  the  world's  end.  The  political  and 
the  social  prophets  are  all  in  full  cry.  Mr.  Wells 
sketches  for  us  what  will  be  going  on  in  1950.  The 
time  is  fruitful  in  prophets  of  gloom,  Cassandras 
who  foresee  the  speedy  "  end  of  all  things."  Failures 
and  falsifications  never  damp  the  ardour  of  our  fore- 
tellers. Yet  their  failures,  one  would  think,  are 
enough  to  damp  the  most  ardent  of  them.  Time 
has  from  the  beginning  been  pouring  cold  water, 
pouring  it  in  cascades  and  Niagaras,  upon  these 
efforts.  Every  century  has  announced  the  coming 
cataclysm,  but  it  has  not  come  yet.  The  early 
Christians,  the  New  Testament  writers  among  them, 
saw  the  Second  Coming  within  a  year  or  two. 
Twenty  centuries  nearly  have  elapsed,  and  still  our 
planet  rolls  along.  In  mediaeval  literature  we  have 
predictions  as   vivid    and    precise  as  those   of    the 

80 


Man  the  Prophet 


Jewish  Apocalyptists,  and  all  of  them  wrong.  It  is 
surprising  how  the  coolest  heads  are  all  at  sea  in 
their  reading  of  the  immediate  future.  Erasmus 
was  quite  sure  that  Luther  was  done  with  at  Worms. 
So  was  Leo  X.  "  The  monk  would  know  better 
when  he  had  slept  off  his  wine."  It  was  Leo  and  not 
Luther  who  by  and  by  knew  better.  Arthur  Young, 
one  of  the  coolest  and  keenest  observers  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  was  sure  that  after  the  meeting 
of  the  French  States  General  the  Revolution  was 
all  over.  Right  up  to  July,  1870,  Edgar  Quinet,  one 
of  the  sanest  of  Frenchmen,  is  expressing  his  despair 
of  ever  seeing  France  delivered  from  the  Napoleonic 
despotism.  It  was  within  a  few  months  of  the  time 
when  Napoleon  was  a  prisoner  and  France  a  republic  ! 
As  we  think  of  these  vaticinations,  of  their  cock- 
sureness  and  their  dogmatic  bitterness,  we  feel  the 
aptness  of  that  appeal  of  Cromwell  to  the  Scottish 
General  Assembly  :  "I  beseech  you,  in  the  bowels 
of  Christ,  think  it  possible  you  may  be  mistaken  !  " 

The  history  of  prophecy  has  been  marked,  as 
perhaps  no  other  history,  by  mistakes,  by  delusions, 
by  affirmations  without  proof  ;  down  to  drivelling 
absurdities  and  criminal  chicaneries.  It  has  been  one 
of  the  most  conspicuous  outlets  of  human  vanity. 
Comte  foretells  the  world-wide  establishment  of 
Comtism  in  a  given,  and  brief,  number  of  years. 
Charles  Fourier  names  the  separate  dates  on  which 
his  phalanstery  system  will  found  itself  successively 
in  France,  in  Europe,  in  the  East,  and  throughout  the 
world,  as  the  final  form  of  human  society.  Each 
enthusiast  in  turn  is  going  to  revolutionise  the  earth, 
and  to  do  it  quick.  The  old  earth  smiles,  gives  them 
in  turn  their  six  feet  of  soil,  and  goes  rolling  on. 

81 


Faith^s   Certainties 

Is  there,  then,  no  true  prophecy  ?  There  is  a 
great  deal.  When  all  is  said,  this  title  of  "  Man  the 
prophet  "  is  a  true  title.  It  designates  one  of  the 
deepest,  most  vital,  most  significant  of  the  human 
functions.  We  can  never  understand  man,  the  soul 
and  hfe  of  him,  the  history  of  him,  without  taking 
account  of  the  side  that  all  this  represents.  The 
excrescences,  the  counterfeits,  the  falsities,  are  simply 
the  irregular  growths,  the  crude  output  of  a  genuine 
faculty,  whose  dweUing  and  activity  go  down  to 
the  deeps  of  his  nature.  The  great  prophets  of 
Palestine — Moses,  EHjah,  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  and  the 
rest ;  the  inspired  teachers  of  Greece — Pythagoras, 
Socrates,  Plato  ;  the  Christian  leaders  of  faith — Paul, 
Augustine,  Francis,  Luther,  Wesley  ;  these  are  peaks 
rising  to  heights  unreached  of  their  fellows,  yet 
rooted  in  the  same  soil,  drawing,  if  in  larger  measure 
than  the  rest,  from  the  sa'me  common  fund  of  power. 
Our  word  "  prophet,"  the  Greek  prophetes,  means 
literally  one  who  speaks  for,  in  the  name  of 
another.  There  are  other  meanings,  linking  it  with 
the  Hebrew  nahi,  the  Greek  mantis,  the  Latin 
vates,  suggesting  seership,  abnormal  faculties  of  the 
soul. 

Both,  or  rather  all,  these  meanings,  how  deeply 
suggestive  they  are  !  The  great  ones  in  this  Hne  have 
always  been  speakers  for  another.  The  "  Thus  saith 
the  Lord  "  of  the  Hebrew  teachers  was  no  mere 
formality.  There  was  that  within  them — it 
is  in  us,  too,  and  asserts  itself  at  times — which 
was  more  than  their  own  mental  faculty,  more 
infinitely  than  their  own  personal  assertiveness.  It 
was  that  august  voice — in  them  and  in  us — which 
rises  at  times  above  the  din  of  our  desires,  of  our 

82 


Man  the  Prophet 


selfish  aims,  proclaiming  itself  as  something  higher 
and  deeper.  We  listen  to  that  voice  in  the  seers  as 
the  voice  of  God  ;  and  that  because  we  recognise  the 
same  voice  in  ourselves.  Plutarch  has  finely 
expressed  this  feeling  in  his  essay  on  the  daimon  of 
Socrates.  It  was,  he  says,  "  the  influence  of  a 
superior  intelligence  and  a  divine  soul  operating  on 
the  soul  of  Socrates,  whose  calm  and  holy  temper 
fitted  him  to  hear  their  spiritual  speech,  which, 
though  filling  all  the  air  around,  is  heard  only  by 
those  whose  souls  are  freed  from  passion  and  its 
perturbing  influence." 

Connected  with  this  human  prophetism,  though 
not  perhaps  of  its  deepest  essence,  there  are,  in 
many  instances,  occult  and  abnormal  powers,  which 
science  at  last  is  beginning  to  recognise  as  one  of  the 
most  fruitful  fields  of  investigation.  The  phenomena 
of  double  or  multiple  personalities,  of  second  sight, 
of  revelations  of  far  distant  and  even  future  occur- 
rences, have  become  too  numerous  and  too  well 
authenticated  to  permit  of  being  treated  lightly. 
They  have  taken  their  place  as  facts  of  human 
experience,  to  be  taken  note  of  in  any  attempt  to 
penetrate  the  mysteries  of  life.  It  is — as  Bergson 
has  said — in  this  region,  the  region  of  the 
unconscious  and  of  the  sub-conscious  mind,  that 
mental  science  has  to  seek  for  its  deepest  truths. 
There  have  been  in  modern  times  flashes  of  vision 
into  the  future  which  transcend  all  the  accepted 
canons  of  empirical  science.  What,  for  instance,  are 
we  to  make  of  La  Harpe's  story  of  the  prophecy  of 
Cazotte,  who,  in  the  year  1788,  at  a  fashionable 
salon,  told  the  fortunes  of  the  company  present  ? 
Cazotte,  an   oddity  we  are  told,  suddenly  began  to 


Faith's   Certainties 

prophesy.  Condorcet  would  die  self-poisoned  on  a 
prison  floor.  Chamfort  would  give  himself  a  score  of 
gashes  to  escape  the  guillotine.  Vicq  d'Azyr,  Bailly, 
were  told  of  their  doom.  Madame  de  Grammont 
would  die  on  the  scaffold.  "  At  least,"  she  cries, 
"  you  will  give  me  the  consolation  of  a  confessor  !  " 
"No,"  is  the  answer.  "  The  last  victim  who  will 
be  so  attended  will  die  before  you  ;  it  will  be  the  King 
of  France."  Within  six  years  every  word  of  his 
prophecy  was  fulfilled.  Assuredly  in  the  depths  of 
the  human  soul  there  are  powers  of  insight  into  the 
unknown,  even  into  the  future,  which  are  yet  un- 
plumbed,  that  are  as  full  of  mystery  as  the  universe 
by  which  it  is  surrounded. 

We  are  apt  to  overlook  the  way  in  which,  in  our 
commonest  actions,  we  find  ourselves  linked  to  the 
future ;  how  our  everyday  doings  are  essentially 
proleptic.  When  we  eat  our  dinner,  when  we  go  to 
bed  at  night,  we  are  acting  prophetically.  We  eat 
because  we  believe  that  the  meal  will  have  a 
nourishing  and  strengthening  effect  upon  us.  We 
invite  sleep  in  the  conviction  that  we  shall  thereby 
be  refreshed  and  restored.  All  the  things  we  touch 
and  handle  in  the  course  of  the  day  are  dealt  with  in 
the  same  prophetic  faith.  We  act  on  them  in  a 
given  way,  sure  that  they  will  react  in  a  given  way. 
And  we  are  easy  about  what  they  will  do  to-morrow 
because  we  know  what  they  do  to-day.  This  is  the 
basis  of  all  the  predictions  of  science.  Science  holds 
to  the  constancy  of  nature.  Having  once  ascer- 
tained the  nature,  the  action  of  a  thing,  of  an  element, 
it  proceeds  on  a  belief  in  the  fidelity  of  that  thing  to 
its  nature.  Heat  expands,  cold  contracts,  gravi- 
tation pulls,   and  will  continue  doing  so.     Nobody 


Man  the  Prophet 

has  assured  us  of  this,  but  it  is  a  faith  which  works, 
and  the  contract  has,  so  far,  never  been  broken. 

And  it  is  here,  surely,  that  we  finally  come  upon 
the  central  ground  and  basis  of  all  true  religious 
prophecy.  The  seer,  what  is  he  ?  Is  he  not  just  the 
man  who  sees  deeper  than  others,  more  clearly  than 
others  ;  sees  right  into  the  heart  of  things,  into  the 
essential  equaUty  of  being ;  one  who,  from  an 
accurate  knowledge  of  the  great  spiritual  forces  at 
work  in  the  world,  can  predict  how  they  will  act,  and 
what  results  will  come  from  this  action  ?  This  it  is 
which  has  made  the  prophets — the  true  ones — 
the  great  moral  authorities  of  the  world.  Whether 
teaching  in  Judaea,  in  Greece,  in  Germany,  in 
England,  the  men  of  the  spirit  have  had  practically 
one  message.  Uttered  in  all  languages,  in  a  hundred 
different  forms,  it  has  meant  always  and  everywhere 
the  same  thing.  They  have  stood,  all  of  them,  for  a 
Kingdom  of  God,  for  a  rule  of  righteousnesss,  for  the 
supremacy  of  the  spirit  over  the  flesh,  for  the  rule  of 
love,  for  the  redemption  of  our  lower  nature  by  a 
higher  nature,  for  the  final  triumph  of  goodness. 

It  did  indeed  require  an  insight  deeper  than  the 
common  to  perceive,  especially  in  the  earlier,  ruder 
days,  the  conquering  qualities  of  the  spiritual,  to 
predict  its  future  from  what  it  was.  The  insight,  you 
may  say,  was  a  scientific  one.  It  was  the  result  of  a 
true  diagnosis.  Just  as  the  modern  researcher, 
probing  and  testing  the  qualities  of  radium,  can  give 
his  forecast  of  what  it  is  to  accomplish,  so  the  prophet, 
the  moral  genius,  whether  he  lived  three  thousand 
years  ago  or  is  among  us  to-day,  predicts  what  the 
spiritual  will  do  from  his  knowledge  of  what  it 
contains.     The    latest    to    appear    in    the    human 

85 


Faith  *s  Certainties 

development,  it  seems  the  weakest  thing  of  all.  It 
was,  for  it  was  in  its  first  infancy.  Amid  all  the 
rough,  wild  forces  around  it,  man's  animalism,  his 
ferocity,  could  it  survive  ?  But  the  prophets  saw  its 
quality  ;  saw  the  divinity  that  was  in  it.  And  so 
they  were  sure  of  it,  and  of  themselves  its  heralds  and 
spokesmen.  They  might  die,  be  tortured,  crucified, 
but  it  would  live  and  would  conquer. 

To-day  we  have  no  recognised  order  of  prophets 
and  no  outstanding  personalities  to  whom  we  should 
instinctively  give  that  name.  But  the  faculty,  in 
more  or  less  developed  form,  is  inherent  in  man,  and 
at  no  time  has  its  secret,  diffused  power  and  working 
being  more  manifest  than  now.  Men  believe,  with 
prophets  and  apostles,  that  the  good  is  going  to  win. 
They  will  perhaps  express  it  as  Fiske,  the  American, 
expresses  it  :  "  Man  is  slowly  passing  from  a  primi- 
tive social  state,  in  which  he  was  little  better  than  the 
brute,  towards  an  ultimate  social  state  in  which 
his  character  shall  be  so  transformed  that  nothing 
of  the  brute  can  be  detected  in  it."  Scepticism, 
materialism,  atheism  will  strive  in  vain  against  the 
prophet  element  in  man.  It  is  in  the  sceptics  them- 
selves. Le  Bon,  speaking  of  the  Paris  workman, 
says  :  "  His  raillery  is  never  directed  against 
religion  as  a  behef,  but  at  the  clergy,  whom  he  con- 
siders a  branch  of  the  Government."  It  was  so  at 
the  time  of  the  Revolution,  in  all  its  orgy  of  free 
thinking  and  free  doing.  The  Jacobin  Hebert  told 
the  people  to  read  the  Gospels,  the  best  of  all  books 
of  morality.  Helvetius,  while  attacking  the  priests, 
declared  the  religion  of  Christ  to  be  "  douce  et 
tolerante."  Beneath  all  the  questionings,  the 
confusions    of   the  intellect,    all    the   turbulence   of 

86 


Man  the   Prophet 


passion,  lies  man's  mystic  element,  his  prophet 
faculty,  his  soul ;  the  soul,  as  insistent  in  its  message 
to-day  as  when  Tertullian  wrote  of  it  :  "  Wherever 
the  soul  comes  to  itself,  as  out  of  a  surfeit,  or  a  sleep, 
or  a  sickness,  and  attains  something  of  its  natural 
soundness,  it  speaks  of  God." 

We  are  full  of  prophecy  to-day,  and  of  the  best 
kind.  There  lies  in  the  hearts  of  men  everywhere 
the  portent  of  a  mighty  change,  the  change  from 
national  enmity  and  suspicion  to  a  new  feeling  of 
mutual  amity  and  trust.  The  war-makers,  the  war- 
mongers realise  it,  and  are  ill  at  ease.  Their  craft  is 
in  danger.  The  trade  in  which  they  have  enriched 
themselves ;  the  trade  in  hatred,  suspicion  and 
fear,  in  the  brutal  instincts  of  men,  in  the  false 
glories  hitherto  attached  to  conquest  and  slaughter — • 
all  this  is  to-day  shaking  and  trembling  as  though 
an  earthquake  moved  beneath  it.  A  new  thought 
has  entered  men's  minds.  This  colossal  weight  of 
armaments,  which  is  crushing  down  our  civilisation  ; 
what,  men  are  asking,  has  created  it  all  ?  It  is  a 
thought  that  has  created  it ;  just  a  thought  and  a 
bad  one.  Put  a  good  thought  in  its  place  and  the 
incubus  will  disappear.  That  good  thought  is  now 
in  process  of  incubation.  By  and  by  it  will  emerge 
m  its  full  strength,  and  we  shall  see  wonders.  The 
world  is  trying  the  power  of  faith,  and  already  it  is 
moving  mountains.  One  nation  trusts  another 
with  its  money ;  trusts  all  races  and  colours  of 
people  with  it,  and  finds  the  trust  justified.  Now 
men  are  saying  :  "  Why  not  trust  a  little  farther, 
credit  these  peoples  with  the  common  sense,  with 
the  good  feeling,  which  settles  difficulties  by  reason 
instead     of     by    daggers,    and    which    pronounces 

87 


Faith's    Certainties 

definitely  and  once  for  all  against  the  cut-throat, 
robber  cult  of  the  barbarous  ages  ?  "  This  faith,  too, 
will  justify  itself.  The  great  prophecy  will  be 
realised.  That,  because  it  is  founded  on  a  sure  thing, 
on  the  ever-developing  nature  of  the  good,  on  its 
ultimate  victory  over  all  that  opposes. 

That  man  is  formed  for  the  future,  that  the  very 
structure  and  shape  of  his  soul  points  and  urges 
him  onward,  is  perhaps  the  surest  of  all  pledges 
about  his  future.  Our  faculties  will  find  what  they 
seek,  what  they  seem  made  for.  The  eye  finds 
light,  the  ear  finds  sound,  the  hand  the  thousand 
things  that  match  its  activities.  And  man's 
prophetic  element,  as  it  develops,  as  it  clears  itself 
from  the  falsities  which  tempt  its  cruder  efforts, 
as  it  learns  its  true  nature  and  its  true  direction,  will 
become  more  and  more  a  pointer  of  the  way.  It 
will  discriminate  between  the  sure  things  and  the 
things  not  sure.  It  will  predict  out  of  its  estimate 
of  values.  Its  instinct  will  be  more  and  more 
fixed  upon  the  eternal,  the  everlasting.  And  the 
promise  enshrined  in  it  will  not  fail,  for  it  is  in  itself 
the  earnest  of  an  eternal  possession. 


88 


IX 

THE  DEVIL'S  TOLL 

We  borrow  the  phrase  from  an  old  writer,  who 
uses  it  to  express  what  he  believed  to  be  the  fact, 
that  from  all  our  transactions,  from  our  gains, 
from  our  virtues  even,  the  devil  takes  a  rebate,  his 
own  especial  discount.  The  aforesaid  writer  believed 
in  the  devil ;  and  why  should  he  not  ?  This  is  a 
queer  universe,  with  some  queer  people  in  it,  as  our 
own  corner  of  it  can  bear  testimony.  We  have  some 
very  bad  specimens  here,  and  there  may  be  bad 
specimens  elsewhere.  To  create  a  moral  realm  of 
free-will  was  a  hazardous  cosmic  experiment ;  its 
great  results  have  been  obtained  at  the  expense  of 
some  failures,  and  there  may  be  more  of  these  than 
we  wot  of.  Who  shall  say  that  the  invisible  world, 
like  our  visible  one,  may  not  have  its  mauvais 
sujets,  with  a  leader  of  them,  pre-eminent  in  badness  ? 
And  who  shall  say  that,  as  we — by  influence, 
contagion,  infection,  or  whatever  you  call  it — com- 
municate our  goodness  and  our  badness  to  our 
fellows,  there  may  not  be  unseen  personalities  who 
act  in  like  manner  upon  each  other  and  upon  us  ? 
Controversy  apart,  we  have  the  "  devil,"  at  least  as  a 
word  in  our  vocabulary,  a  much  used  and  a  most 
effective  word.  Take  it  as  you  will — for  a  principle 
of  evil,  for  the  fly  in  our  moral  ointment,  for  the 
inferior,    the   bad,    as    opposed   to   the   good.     Our 

89 


Faith's   Certainties 

theme  will  work  itself  out  under  any  of  these  defini- 
tions. There  is  a  something  quite  near  enough  to 
us  which  we  have  to  be  "  up  against,"  to  resist  and 
to  fight,  if  we  are  to  come  to  any  good.  We  can 
accept  a  devil,  as  the  late  William  Jones  used  to  say, 
if  only  we  keep  our  foot  on  his  neck.  Let  us  hope 
that  if  there  be  a  personality  of  that  name  he  will, 
as  Robbie  Burns  has  it,  some  day  "  tak'  a  thought 
and  mend."  The  fact  remains — the  thing  we 
have  here  to  consider — that  our  adversary  does  take 
his  toll ;  that  all  our  good  doing  and  good  being  is 
subject  to  a  horrible  discount ;  that  our  best,  even  in 
the  hour  of  its  victory,  pays  tribute  to  our  worst  ; 
that  our  forward  movement  includes  those  manifold 
sHps  backward  ;  that  our  success  carries  in  it  so  often 
the  seeds  of  defeat.  It  seems  hardly  an  exhilarating 
subject,  but  it  is  a  real  one,  and  the  real,  in  all  its 
phases,  is  our  truest  business.  And  the  conclusion 
of  it  may  turn  out,  after  all,  to  be  anything  but  a 
pessimistic  one. 

The  illustrations  of  the  theme  are  all  around  us. 
Take,  for  instance,  the  recent  Balkan  business.  How 
exultant,  how  full  of  hope  were  we  all,  a  little  while 
ago,  in  watching  it !  These  brave  young  peoples,  who 
had  at  last  found  themselves,  their  manhood,  their 
moral  strength,  at  grips  with  the  barbaric  power  that 
had  enslaved  them  for  centuries  !  How  we  hailed 
the  heroism  which  in  the  fight  for  freedom  flung 
itself  on  the  giant  foe,  braving  death  and  wounds  in 
the  struggle  for  independence  !  Here  was  a  new 
dawn,  the  opening  of  a  glorious  future  !  And  then 
all  this  seemed  spoiled  and  lost.  These  brothers-in- 
arms, in  the  moment  of  victory,  turn  their  arms 
against  each  other.     In  winning  against  the  enemy 

90 


The  Devil's  Toll 

they  have  lost  themselves.  The  aspiration  for 
liberty  has  become  a  lust  for  plunder  ;  their  hatred 
for  slavery  has  become  a  hate  of  each  other.  We  call 
back  our  praises ;  we  turn  in  disgust  from  this 
hideous  fratricide.  It  is  the  story  of  the  French 
Revolution  over  again.  How  glorious  was  the 
beginning  of  that  great  uprising  !  The  events  of  1789 
sent  all  the  noble  spirits  of  Europe  mad  with  joy. 
Our  Enghsh  poets,  Byron,  Keats,  Shelley,  Words- 
worth, burst  into  exultant  paeans.  Of  that  tim« 
Wordsworth  wrote  : 

Bliss  were  it  in  that  dawn  to  be  alive. 
And  to  be  young  were  very  heaven. 

Then  came  the  devil's  discount ;  the  horrors  of 
'91  and  '93.  The  noyades,  the  massacres  of  the 
Conciergerie,  of  the  Abbaye,  the  orgies  of  the 
guillotine,  the  fiendish  atrocities  of  a  St.  Just,  of 
a  Marat,  of  a  Robespierre.  The  sunshine  seemed 
all  gone ;  the  optimists  became  pessimists.  But 
let  us  remember  here  what  followed  ;  remember  it 
for  our  comfort.  The  toll  was  indeed  heavy,  but  it 
did  not  exhaust  the  capital ;  it  left  it  indeed  almost 
untouched.  The  French  Revolution  remained,  and 
remains,  one  of  the  greatest  events  in  history.  The 
atrocities  are  over  but  the  good  abides.  After  all, 
it  was  a  stroke  for  liberty,  for  human  emancipation. 
It  was  the  abolition  of  serfdom,  the  creation  of 
millions  of  peasant  proprietors,  the  advent  into 
the  world  of  a  new  spirit,  the  notice  to  quit  to  a 
thousand  hateful  tyrannies.  And  what  happened 
then,  be  sure,  will  happen  again.  In  South  Eastern 
Europe  the  toll  is  being  paid  ;  but  it  will  not  exhaust 
the  capital.  These  people  are  mad  to-day,  but  they 
will   not    always   be   mad.     No   good   once   won   is 

91 


Faith's   Certainties 

ever  finally  lost.  For  the  folly,  the  savagery,  of 
the  hour  the  full  price  will  be  paid.  And  the  payment 
will  be  in  itself  an  enduring  lesson.  What  has 
happened  shows  us  exactly  where  these  people  are 
in  their  moral  development.  They  have  a  long  row 
to  hoe.  We  have  had  to  abate  our  hopes  concerning 
them.  But  the  world's  whole  history  shows  us  how 
absurd  it  would  be  to  cease  to  hope. 

Where  humanity  so  far  has  had  to  pay  toll  arises, 
we  see,  from  the  fact  that  so  many  of  its  perfections 
have  been  limited  ones.  The  win  has  been  for  a 
class,  a  caste,  instead  of  one  for  the  whole.  The 
Athenian  civilisation,  with  all  its  splendours,  was 
built  on  slavery.  Beneath  its  triumphs  of  art  and 
literature  was  the  groaning  mass  of  the  unenfran- 
chised. The  life  of  French  society  before  '89,  with  its 
salons,  its  circle  of  intellectuals,  its  life  of  cultured 
ease,  of  polished  epigram  ;  the  life  pictured  for  us  in 
the  memoirs  of  Voltaire,  of  Diderot,  of  Mile, 
de  I'Espinasse,  was  almost  perfect  in  its  way. 
Talleyrand  said  of  it  that  no  one  could  realise  how 
charming  existence  could  be  who  had  not  known 
it  before  the  catastrophe  of  the  Revolution.  Ah, 
if  it  could  have  been  charming  for  everybody  !  But 
it  was  bought  at  too  high  a  price  ;  the  price  of  the 
blood  and  tears  of  a  nation.  In  England,  in  the 
time  of  the  Georges,  the  men  of  fashion,  the  landed 
proprietors,  had  a  great  time  and  produced  some 
brilliant  men.  It  was  a  time  when  we  won  half  the 
world  and  dominated  the  rest.  Horace  Walpole, 
in  Chatham's  days,  speaks  of  looking  out  each 
morning  when  he  got  up  for  news  of  the  latest  victory. 
But  all  England  was  not  in  those  days  either  glorious 
or  conquering.     Those  were  the  days  of  the  Commons 

92 


The  Devil's  Toll 

Enclosure  Acts.  If  our  readers  would  learn  of  them 
let  them  study  "  The  EngHsh  Labourer,  1760  to 
1830,"  by  the  Hammonds,  where  they  will  find  how 
the  once  prosperous  workers  of  the  countryside 
were  despoiled  of  their  lands,  of  their  ancient  rights, 
of  their  economic  freedoms,  and  reduced  to  what 
M.  de  Laboulaye  has  described  as  the  most  forlorn 
condition  of  all  European  toilers.  Here  again 
the  devil's  price  was  so  abominably  high,  and  he 
got  it  all  ! 

To  come  to  more  intimate  and  personal  matters. 
Here  every  man  of  us  can  be  seen  paying  his  dues. 
They  are  sliced  off  from  his  life-earnings  as  neatly  and 
as  surely  as  though  they  were  dividend  warrants 
mulcted  of  the  income-tax.  Our  winnings  in  one 
direction  seem  always  to  mean  losings  in  another.  A 
man's  gifts  pay  toll.  The  genius  is  notorious  for  his 
onesidedness,  for  his  grave  defects  in  given  directions. 
We  read  of  the  genus  irritahile  vatum.  We  think  of  a 
Coleridge,  a  De  Quincey,  drugging  themselves  with 
opium.  Du  Maurier,  in  his  picture  of  Svengali  in 
"  Trilby,"  gives  us  a  glorious  musician  who  is  a 
scoundrel  in  all  the  rest  of  him.  Lady  Troubridge, 
in  one  of  her  novels,  declares  roundly  that  musicians 
are  not  to  be  trusted  in  matters  of  morality. 
Certainly  some  of  the  greatest  of  them  have  been 
queer  moralists.  And  apart  from  open  immorality, 
what  an  irony  it  is  when  some  high-strung  nature, 
exercised  in  his  study  with  the  highest  themes  in 
life  and  religion,  comes  away  exhausted  by  his 
efforts  in  idealism,  with  nerves  all  ajar,  and  has 
nothing  but  ill-temper  to  offer  to  his  wife  or  his 
friends  !  How  the  infernal  powers  laugh  when  the 
preacher,  after  discoursing  eloquently  of  humility, 

93 


Faith's   Certainti  es 

comes  away  puffed  up  with  his  performance  !  A 
famous  preacher,  and,  moreover,  a  very  excellent 
man,  on  coming  down  once  from  his  pulpit  was  met 
by  an  admiring  auditor  with  eulogies  on  the  grand 
discourse  he  had  delivered.  "  Ah  !  "  was  the  reply, 
"  the  devil  has  told  me  all  that  already  !  " 

What  a  book  could  be  written  on  "  The  Sins  of  the 
Saints,"  on  the  bad  side  of  spirituality  !  It  is  one 
of  the  most  disturbing  reflections,  that  of  the  evil 
wrought  by  good  men.  They  were  such  earnest 
theologians,  so  absorbingly  eager  for  the  true  faith, 
those  starters  of  religious  persecutions,  those  founders 
of  the  Inquisition  !  In  the  interests  of  "  the  truth  " 
so  many  of  them  had  started  to  tell  lies  !  What 
a  phase  of  religious  human  nature  is  that  exhibited 
by  the  history  of  pious  frauds,  of  winking  Madonnas, 
of  the  wholesale  manufacture  of  sacred  relics  ! 
There  has  been  enough  wood  of  the  true  cross  distri- 
buted over  Christendom  to  build  a  suburb.  Writers 
of  the  later  Judaism  and  of  early  Christianity  did 
not  hesitate  to  ascribe  their  works  to  the  authorship 
of  Moses,  of  Enoch,  of  the  Patriarchs.  Their  own 
authority  was  not  good  enough ;  they  therefore 
borrowed  these  great  names  without  scruple  and  as  a 
pious  act.  We  are  amazed  to  find  so  good  a  man 
as  Jerome  coolly  writing  as  follows  to  a  friend  : 
"  The  less  the  people  comprehend,  the  more  it  is 
edified.  Thus  our  Fathers  and  Doctors  have  often 
written  not  what  they  thought,  but  what  circum- 
stances and  the  needs  of  the  time  made  them  say." 
In  the  supposed  interests  of  faith  men  have  shut 
their  eyes  to  the  plainest  evidence.  They  have,  as 
Hoffding  says,  "  beheved  the  impossible  in  order  to 
save  the  necessary."     There  is  a  story  of  Keble,  in  an 

94 


The  Devil's  Toll 

argument  with  Buckland,  maintaining  that  the  fossils 
found  in  the  geologic  strata  were  put  there  by  the 
special  act  of  God.  The  good  Melancthon  stormed 
against  the  Copernican  theory  as  contrary  to  religion. 
Zeal  for  what  they  thought  the  Gospel  has  led  men 
into  the  strangest  courses.  We  read  of  a  learned 
man  hke  Carlstadt,  in  the  heat  of  the  Reformation 
time,  declaring  at  Wittenburg  that  there  was  no  need 
of  academies  and  learning  ;  and  of  George  Mohr, 
rector  of  the  grammar  school,  telling  the  people  to 
take  their  children  from  the  school,  for  there  was  no 
need  of  study  henceforth.  Had  they  not  among 
them  the  divine  prophets  of  Zwickau,  Storch,  Thoma 
and  Stiibner,  who  were  filled  with  the  Spirit,  with- 
out any  study  ?  And  in  our  own  day  how  often  have 
we  seen  the  Church,  or  sections  of  it,  arraying  its 
hosts  against  research,  when  the  results  of  it  seemed 
to  contradict  some  theological  assumption  !  Every- 
where we  see  our  poor  humanity,  even  in  the  highest 
exercises  of  its  spirit,  paying  its  toll  to  the  inferior 
powers  ;  side  by  side  with  its  heroism,  its  sacrifices, 
its  noble  devotion,  exhibiting  its  fears,  its  ignorance, 
its  prejudice,  its  want  of  the  highest  faith  of  all — 
the  trust  in  truth  as  the  one  revelation  of  God. 

What  perversity  is  it  in  us  that  leads  us  so 
persistently  to  spoil  our  good  things  ?  Take  the 
question  of  our  fellowships,  of  our  human  inter- 
course. Our  first  impulses  here  are  so  genuine,  so 
wholesome.  Our  fellow  men  are  dear  to  us.  There 
is  nothing  so  interesting  as  a  human  face.  In  the 
city  we  are  too  hurried,  too  crowded  for  the  true 
valuation  of  our  kind.  But  in  the  country,  where 
men  are  scarce,  we  have  our  crack  with  the  labourer 
in  the  field,  with  the  tramp  on  the  road.     The  child's 

95 


Faith^s   Certainties 

face  on  the  doorstep  is  a  benediction.  And  where 
friend  meets  friend  round  the  table,  at  the  fireside, 
in  some  special  coterie,  the  soul  expands  to  its  full 
dimensions,  overflows  with  all  that  is  best  in  it.  And 
yet  even  here  what  an  enormous,  what  a  shameful 
toll  do  we  pay  to  the  devil  !  What  unblessed  tongue 
was  it  that  invented  detraction  ?  Think  of  that 
villainous  word,  backbiting  !  That  when  a  man's 
back  is  turned  shall  be  the  moment  when  we  think 
more  meanly  of  him  and  speak  less  cordially  of  him 
than  when  we  looked  him  in  the  face  !  That  all  this 
is  a  falsity,  both  to  him  and  our  true  self,  is  evidenced 
by  the  fact  that  in  the  actual  presence  of  the  man, 
when  his  eye  meets  ours,  when  his  hand  clasps  ours, 
our  feeling  for  him,  our  appreciation  of  him,  is  so 
different,  so  much  higher.  Nowhere  surely  does  the 
inner  training  of  the  spirit  show  more  carelessness, 
more  lack  of  honest  thoroughness,  than  here.  This 
is  a  baseness  we  never  ought  to  permit  ourselves. 
The  thing  begins  in  our  thought,  and  it  is  our  thought 
that  we  need  to  take  more  thoroughly  in  hand.  It  is 
a  reptile  instinct — truly  a  bit  of  the  old  serpent  in  us  ; 
and  the  first  appearance  of  its  ugly  head  in  our 
consciousness  should  be  stamped  on  with  iron  heel. 
What  we  feel  towards  a  man  when  we  talk  to  him, 
let  us  have  nothing  baser  in  us  when  we  think  of 
him.  To  this  devil's  toll,  as  indeed,  to  all  the  others, 
we  may  apply  with  entire  accordance  the  maxim  of 
Ancient  Pistol — otherwise  so  queer  a  moralist — 
"  base  is  the  slave  who  pays  !  " 

There  is  another  department,  of  vital  importance 
to  humanity,  in  which  a  heavy  toll  has  gone  the  wrong 
way.  It  is  that  of  the  exercise  of  spiritual  influence. 
Here  is  one  of  the  great  problems  of  the  Church,  and 

96 


The  Devil's  Toll 

especially  of  its  appointed  teachers  and  emissaries — 
the  problem  of  the  evangelist,  of  the  preacher. 
Rightly  considered,  there  is  no  higher  function  than 
that ;  no,  and  none  more  delicate,  none  where  one 
may  more  easily  go  wrong.  To  persuade  men  to  the 
acceptance  of  life's  best ;  to  inspire  them  with  the 
sublime  vision  of  God,  the  soul,  and  immortality ; 
to  win  the  drunkard  from  his  cups,  the  libertine  from 
his  vices  ;  to  help  in  the  fight  against  greed  and 
selfishness  and  base  passion  ;  to  infect  a  population 
with  the  enthusiasm  of  goodness,  what  higher  art, 
what  sublimer  husbandry,  than  this  ?  But  in  this 
high  business  comes  the  danger.  The  work  is  to 
cultivate  the  soul ;  the  actual  practice  too  often 
has  been  to  crush  it.  The  business  is  to  help  men  to 
develop  themselves  ;  the  temptation  is  to  swamp 
them  under  one's  own  egotism.  Instead  of  aiming  to 
strengthen  the  individual  judgment  so  that  it  may 
itself  see  truth,  of  strengthening  the  individual  will 
that  it  may  form  its  own  firm  decisions  ;  behold,  the 
priest  arrogating  to  himself  all  right  of  vision,  all 
exercise  of  the  judgment  and  the  will !  He  must 
swell,  if  the  people  dwindle.  To  increase  his  own 
vision-value  he  must  close  the  layman's  eye. 
Amongst  a  community  of  the  lame  and  the  blind  the 
man  who  can  see  and  can  walk  has  become  all- 
important.  Ecclesiasticism  has  never  yet  been 
able  to  get  away  from  that  view  of  things  and  the  line 
of  procedure  which  it  suggests.  Says  M.  Loisy,  of 
the  Roman  Church  :  ''  One  cannot  deny  that  the 
tendency  of  Catholicism  in  the  reaction  against 
Protestantism  has  been  towards  the  effacement  of 
the  individual,  to  place  man  under  tutelage,  to  the 
control  of  all  his  activities  in  a  way  which  does  not 

97 


Faith's  Certainties 

help  initiative.     Its  rock  is  to  want  too  much  to 
govern  men,  in  place  of  elevating  souls." 

Rome  has  undoubtedly  shown  this  tendency  in  its 
most  extreme  form.  Of  all  the  churches  it  has  paid 
the  largest  toll  to  the  baser  instinct  of  domination. 
But  Protestantism  has  not  escaped.  In  its  com- 
munions it  has  been  the  ever-dodging  peril  of  power- 
ful personalities — preachers,  theologians — to  impose 
their  own  personality  with  crushing  and  annihilating 
force  upon  the  minds,  the  souls,  of  the  timid  and  the 
weak.  Freedom  with  them  was  to  be  their  freedom, 
not  that  of  their  hearers.  To  be  eyes  to  the  blind 
is  all  very  well.  But  so  much  better  to  heal  the  blind, 
to  help  them  to  see  for  themselves  !  A  crucial 
instance  of  what  we  mean — one  of  those  extreme 
cases  which  show  in  its  full  proportions  what  the 
danger  is — is  given  us  in  the  life  of  Alice,  the  wife  of 
Laurence  Oliphant,  in  her  relations  with  Harris, 
the  American  prophet  of  the  new  life.  Says  she, 
describing  those  relations  :  "  One  only  thing  has  been 
a  terrible  pang  to  me,  the  giving  over  of  my  own 
judgment,  in  questions  of  moral  judgment,  to  any 
human  authority.  It  is  so  absolutely  new  and  incon- 
prehensible  an  idea  to  me,  that  any  other  testimony 
should  supplant,  without  risk  to  itself  and  me,  the 
inner  test  of  my  actions  that  my  conscience  affords." 
*'  New  and  incomprehensible  "  !  Alas,  neither  new 
nor  incomprehensible.  It  is  an  old,  old  story  of  the 
triumph  of  the  priestly  instinct,  first  in  the  teacher 
himself,  and  then  in  the  pupil  who  became  his 
victim.  Yet,  what  a  monstrous  story  !  This 
dehcate,  high-strung,  essentially  noble  nature,  over- 
crowed and  overawed  by  the  dominating  egotism  of 
this  masterful  spirit,   until   her  own  judgment   and 

98 


The  Devil's  Toll 

reason,  all  the  formative  forces  of  character,  are  to 
lie  crushed  and  broken  beneath  his  heel.  But  the 
danger  here  is  in  all  of  us  who  aspire  to  teach.  With- 
out a  resolute  repression,  without  a  sunbright  clear- 
ness of  view  as  to  the  limits  of  legitimate  influence, 
we,  too,  may  become  that ;  may  have  it  truly  said  of 
us :  "  de  te  fahida  narratur."  When  we  are  using  our 
power,  not  to  develop  but  to  repress  it  in  others  ; 
when  our  aim  is  that  all  whom  we  reach  shall  take  our 
mould  instead  of  their  own  ;  when  we  reinforce  our 
own  will  by  sucking  the  life  blood  of  theirs  ;  surely 
then  to  all  the  tolls  that  enrich  the  infernal  revenues, 
we  are  making  the  most  valued  contribution  ! 

Assuredly  the  human  education  is  as  yet  a  long 
way  from  being  complete.  To  put  it  otherwise, 
we  are  an  overtaxed  race.  We  are  paying  too  much 
to  the  wrong  custom  house.  Or,  to  put  it  still  other- 
wise, we  are  a  wasteful  race.  In  the  production  of 
our  perfections,  of  our  virtues,  we  act  too  much 
in  the  way  ol  the  old,  unscientific  manufacturers, 
whose  processes  left  an  enormous  amount  of  ugly, 
waste  material — slag  heaps  which  made  the  land- 
scape hideous.  Science  is,  in  these  matters,  reaching 
a  better  method,  where  nothing  is  regarded  as  waste  ; 
where  the  whole  material  is  brought  into  useful, 
beautiful  service.  And  that  is  what,  in  man's 
spiritual  culture,  we  have  to  aim  at,  and  what,  in 
the  end,  will  be  attained.  We  have  to  learn  to 
achieve  success  without  pride  ;  we  have  to  achieve 
a  civilisation  where  the  prosperity,  the  joy  of  life, 
shall  be  the  privilege,  not  of  one  class,  but  of  all. 
We  have  to  learn  that  our  gifts,  however  brilliant, 
are  nothing  in  the  scale  against  character,  against 
goodness.     We  have  to  reach  a  theory  and  practice  of 

99 


Faith's    Certainties 

social  intercourse  where  all  the  freshness,  the  gener- 
osity of  it  is  to  be  guarded  in  our  earnest  thought, 
as  a  precious  mixture,  to  be  soiled  by  no  malign 
admixture.  Our  aim  must  be  for  a  spiritual 
influence  which  helps  but  never  seeks  to  dominate, 
which  respects  the  freedom  of  the  will  as  God's 
greatest  gift  to  the  soul.  And  all  this  and  more  will 
yet  be  accomplished.  This,  because  God  is  at  work 
in  His  world,  visibly,  before  our  eyes,  moving 
towards  His  great  purpose.  When  we  have  fully 
caught  His  spirit,  been  saturated  with  His  fulness, 
we  shall  pay  no  more  toll  to  the  devil. 


h 


100 


X 

THE  PRICE 

"  Price  "  is  one  of  the  best-used  words  in  the 
language.  It  is  one  of  those,  too,  that  reach  deepest. 
The  street  urchin  knows  it,  turning  over  the  half- 
penny in  his  pocket.  It  meets  us  in  every  shop 
window  ;  it  is  bawled  from  every  huckster's  stall ; 
it  rings  through  all  the  world's  exchanges.  Every 
morning  our  newspaper  has  among  its  headlines, 
*'  Current  Prices,"  "  The  Price  of  Gold,"  a  long 
following  Hst  of  figures  which  means  this  one  thing. 
"  Every  man  has  his  price,"  said  once  Sir  Robert 
Walpole,  with  a  sinister  significance.  It  is  true  in  a 
better  sense  than  this  ;  and  he  might  have  added, 
*'  Everything  has  its  price."  We  have  never  yet 
come  to  any  agreement  as  to  what  the  price  is,  what 
it  should  be.  In  some  directions,  it  is  true,  we  have 
made  vast  advances.  It  was  an  epoch  in  the  history 
of  man  the  trader  when  he  hit  upon  coinage  as 
a  common  denominator,  a  recognised  medium  of 
exchange.  What  a  puzzle  was  business  before 
that  day  !  How  were  you  to  hit  on  an  exact  equiv- 
alent of  value,  when  the  question  was  between 
exchanging  so  many  sheep  for  so  many  bullocks,  or  to 
swap  a  slave  for  a  suit  of  clothes  ?  Money  has 
enormously  facilitated  exchange ;  but  even  here 
we   have   by   no    means   struck   an    absolute    value 

lOI 


Faith's   Certainties 

estimate.  The  production  of  gold  makes  a  constant 
variation  in  its  price,  and  so  in  the  price  of  other 
things.  As  gold  becomes  cheap  all  else  becomes  dear. 
And  there  are  other  variants.  The  present  writer, 
in  Turkey  during  the  war  with  Russia,  found  the 
money-changers  in  the  streets  of  Constantinople 
busy  with  curious  transactions.  The  Government 
was  easing  its  own  financial  strain  by  pouring  out 
from  its  printing-presses  daily  issues  of  paper.  As  a 
consequence,  the  value  of  paper  money  varied 
every  morning  with  the  amount  on  the  market. 
It  reached  finally  about  one-fifth  that  of  hard 
money — a  thing  one  had  to  remember  when  making 
purchases  ! 

To-day — and  outside  Turkey — our  value  systems 
are  full  of  artificialities.  A  rich  man's  wealth  con- 
sists of  some  bundles  of  paper,  which  he  perhaps 
never  sees,  lying  in  a  bank's  strong-room.  Bonds, 
shares,  debentures,  deeds,  printed  in  various 
languages,  with  some  signatures  scrawled  at  the 
bottom,  so  much  paper  and  ink,  which  a  five 
minutes'  blaze  would  effectually  destroy.  If  he  lost 
them  he  would  be  beggared.  But  is  this  wealth  ? 
Is  the  gold  for  which  they  could  be  exchanged 
wealth  ?  For  one  thing,  there  is  not  gold  enough 
in  the  world  to  redeem  half  the  paper  that  is  afloat. 
Neither  one  nor  the  other  is  the  real  thing.  If  all 
the  gold  and  all  the  paper  securities  in  existence 
were  destroyed  to-morrow,  the  world  would  be  very 
little  poorer.  These  values  are  simply  representative. 
They  are  the  signs  of  something  behind.  Your 
railway  shares  are  not  wealth.  The  wealth  is  the 
railway.  Your  Chinese  bonds  are  worth  what  they 
are  because   they  stand   for    China  ;    its  labourers' 

102 


The  Price 

toil,  its  harvests,  its  resources  above  and  beneath 
the  ground. 

And  your  solidest  values,  when  you  have  got  them 
there  in  hand,  how  they  vary !  To  a  man  dying  of 
thirst  in  the  Sahara  Desert  you  offer  a  bag  of 
diamonds,  or  a  flask  of  water  and  a  lift  in  your 
caravan.  Which  will  he  prefer  ?  Diamonds  are 
cheap  for  him  at  that  moment.  The  multi- 
millionaire going  down  in  the  Titanic  would  offer 
most  of  his  wealth  for  a  boat.  Would  he  give  it  for 
a  place  in  a  boat  if  that  meant  the  displacement  of 
another,  of  a  woman  ?  Ah,  there  comes  another 
question  of  value,  another  matter  of  price  !  Here 
we  are  getting  deeper.  Here  we  are  asking  whether 
life  itself  is  worth  the  price  of  honour  ;  whether  a 
continued  consciousness  on  this  earth,  dogged  for 
ever  with  a  sense  of  failure  in  life's  highest,  is  as  good 
as  that  one  great  moment  of  losing  it  in  the  interest  of 
the  highest  ?  Can  we  ever  despair  of  humanity 
when  we  remember  in  what  innumerable  instances, 
amongst  its  commonest  specimens — colliers  throwing 
themselves  away  in  the  effort  to  save  a  comrade, 
rough  fishermen  manning  the  lifeboat  in  the  teeth 
of  the  gale,  Atkins,  with  bullets  raining  round  him, 
carrjdng  his  wounded  officer  back  to  the  line  of 
safety — how  the  common  man  has  risen  to  this 
height  of  sacrifice,  preferring,  as  Aristotle  puts  it,  "  to 
accomplish  one  great  and  noble  deed  rather  than 
many  small  ones  "  ! 

To  pay  the  price.  It  is  one  of  the  deepest  laws  of 
life.  All  nature's  transactions  with  us  are  on  this 
basis.  Do  ut  des,  the  maxim  which  Bismarck  was  so 
fond  of  quoting,  "  I  give  that  you  may  give,"  is  the 
cosmic  motto.      Up  to   a   point   we   seem  to  have 

103 


Faith's    Certainties 

things  gratis  ;  nature  is  so  boundless  in  her 
generosities.  We  pay  no  toll  for  her  sunshine, 
her  fresh  air,  the  splendid  pictures  she  paints 
on  the  skies,  that  she  composes  out  of  her  valleys, 
her  mountains. 

She  presents  us  with  life  itself ;  with  our  bodies  and 
minds  ;  with  all  the  wonder  of  bone  and  muscle,  of 
eye  and  ear,  of  memory,  imagination,  the  whole 
faculty  of  thought.  She  has  given  us  the  world  in 
fee.  And  yet  observe  the  limit.  Before  any  of 
these  things  become  useful  to  us  we  have  to  put  in 
something  of  our  own.  The  ancients  worshipped 
Ceres,  the  fertiliser,  the  goddess  of  harvests.  But 
they  got  no  harvests  ready  made.  To  air  and  sun, 
to  the  rich  qualities  of  the  soil,  they  must  yoke  their 
own  wit  and  toil ;  must  plough  and  sow,  must  thresh 
and  reap,  must  grind  and  bake  and  brew  before  they 
ate  and  drank.  All  the  gifts  were  half  gifts  ;  never 
a  something  for  nothing. 

For  our  human  life  we  must  pay — ourselves  and 
others.  To  come  into  the  world  cost  our  mother 
her  birth  pangs.  For  long  years  our  growth  and 
maintenance  meant  the  toil  and  care  of  our  parents. 
And  this  great  heritage  we  have  come  into — of 
civilisation,  of  knowledge,  of  religion,  of  freedom — 
have  we  thought  of  all  that  has  cost  ?  Not  an  in- 
vention but  someone  has  given  his  best,  often  his  life, 
for  it ;  our  freedom  is  blood-bought.  The  right  to 
think  for  ourselves,  to  worship  according  to  our 
conscience,  has  meant  the  heretic's  obloquy,  the 
martyr's  fires,  all  endured  by  the  brave  genera- 
tions before  us.  Our  very  eating  and  drinking 
is  at  the  price  of  human  beginners  who  ventured 
deadly  experiments  in  the  discovery  of  what  was 

104 


The  Price 

good  to  eat  and  drink.  Here  is  a  debt  to  start  with  ; 
a  debt  we  can  never  pay  off ;  which  no  one  worth  his 
salt  will  carry  comfortably  except  as  he  manfully 
does  his  stroke  for  the  general  weal ;  adds  something 
of  value  to  the  heritage  of  his  successors.  The 
doctrine  of  vicarious  sacrifice,  of  the  doing  and 
suffering  of  one  for  another,  is  writ  in  the  heart  of  the 
universe,  in  letters  of  blood  and  fire.  Christianity 
has  that  blood-red  cosmic  signature  upon  it ;  it 
builds  itself  upon  a  Cross. 

But  observe  that  this  law  of  vicarious  sacrifice, 
which  we  find  everywhere  in  life,  while  it  goes  a 
certain  way,  never  goes  the  whole  way.  The  so  much 
done,  so  much  borne  for  us,  leaves  always  the  final, 
decisive  thing  to  be  done,  to  be  borne  by  ourselves. 
To  be  human  on  the  present  scale  of  the  human,  has 
meant,  we  have  said,  the  paying  of  so  big  a  price  by 
others.  But  there  is  also  the  price  we  pay.  To  be 
human,  on  our  scale,  has  meant  first  the  lodging  of 
our  spirit  in  a  bodily  structure,  the  most  wonderful 
instrument  in  the  world.  Have  you  ever  studied 
it  ?  Everyone  should  read  carefully  some  good 
book  on  human  physiology — there  is  no  finer  than 
Huxley's — if  only  to  know  this  part  of  what  it  means 
to  be  alive.  Study  the  mechanism  of  the  eye, 
of  the  ear,  of  the  digestive  apparatus,  of  one  hair  of 
your  head.  Study,  above  all,  the  brain  and  the 
nervous  system.  Was  there  ever  such  a  machine  ? 
It  is  computed  that  there  are  some  20,000  billion 
cells  in  the  whole  organism  ;  every  one  of  them  a 
unit,  and  all  working  together  in  a  perfect  co-ordina- 
tion. Was  there  ever  such  an  exquisite  fineness  of 
texture,  a  lacework  so  delicately  woven  !  And  the 
result  is  to  give  us  such  a  range  of  sensations,  such  a 

105 


Faith's    Certainties 

play  of  feeling  and  sensibility  as  nothing  else  in  the 
animal  world  can  touch.  And  behind  that  is  the 
mind  itself,  with  all  its  infinite  sweep  of  thought, 
of  knowledge,  of  affection,  and  aspiration.  But 
all  this  at  a  price.  Against  this  higher  apparatus 
of  noble  feeling,  the  possibility  of  the  acuter  pains. 
The  animal,  which  knows  nothing  of  our  joys, 
knows  nothing  also  of  our  sorrows.  The  sluggish 
brute  nerve,  which  is  incapable  of  our  exquisite 
thrills,  is  also  insensible  to  the  acuter  agonies  we  may 
know.  The  animal  has  some  pangs  of  separation  ; 
it  has  its  moment  of  death.  But  how  faint  and 
feeble  its  sense  of  bereavement  compared  with  ours  ! 
And  death  to  it  is  nothing  throughout  its  life,  a 
consideration  that  never  enters.  To  us  death,  in  our 
later  years,  is  the  inseparable  companion,  the  ever 
haunting  shadow.  Our  height  of  being  pays  its  price. 
But  we  pay  it  willingly,  do  we  not  ?  Would  one  of 
us  exchange  our  human  status,  with  all  its  cost,  for 
the  lower  one  ?  A  thousand  times,  no  !  We  would 
go  higher  yet,  with  all  the  risks  that  entails.  And 
this  because  we  are  learning  that  other  lesson  of 
the  price  ;  the  lesson  that  what  we  pay  is  into 
a  good  exchequer  ;  that  our  trial  and  suffering  is 
no  waste  product,  but  comes  back  in  the  grandest 
of  returns. 

A  giving  which  is  always  a  half-gift ;  a  vicarious 
sacrifice  which  goes  half  the  way  ;  a  payment  on  one 
side  which  always  demands  a  payment  on  your  side. 
This,  we  see,  is  nature's  lesson,  her  law  of  life.  She 
has  made  this  so  unmistakably  plain  to  us  ;  has 
printed  it  in  so  clear  a  type,  that  it  is  a  perversity 
which  amounts  to  wickedness  if  we  fail  to  use  the 
lesson  in  our  interpretation  of  religion,  in  our  inter- 

10  6 


The  Price 

pretation  of  the  religious  deeps  of  the  Christian 
Gospel.  For  the  grace  of  -God  in  Christ  Jesus  is 
always  on  the  line  of  the  grace  revealed  in  nature. 
Here  again  it  is  do  ut  des.  It  is  so  in  Christ's  great 
gift  of  Himself,  in  His  suffering  love  for  us,  in  His 
atonement.  Antinomianism,  in  all  its  forms,  is 
Christ's  Gospel  with  the  devil  as  interpreter  ;  the 
lie  which  arose  in  Paul's  time,  and  which  drew  from 
him  the  indignant  exclamation,  "  What,  shall  we  sin 
that  grace  may  abound  ?  "  What  a  perversity  has 
been  that  use  of  the  doctrine  of  imputed  righteousness 
which  makes  God  regard  us  as  other  than  we  are,  and 
treat  us  as  though  we  were  somebody  else,  because 
of  what  some  other  has  done  for  us  ;  a  doctrine  of 
simulation  and  make  believe  !  On  this  we  may 
well  remember  Coleridge's  remarks  in  his  "  Aids  to 
Reflection."  He  imagines  a  bad,  loveless  son  who 
has  repaid  his  mother's  affection  by  a  total  neglect. 
Another  steps  in  and  performs  all  those  duties  of  love 
and  service  instead  of  the  son.  "  Would  that,"  he 
asks,  "  be  a  reason  for  the  mother's  loving  that  son  ?  " 
Says  she  :  "  Must  not  the  sense  of  the  other's  good- 
ness teach  me  more  vividly  to  feel  the  evil  in  my 
son  ?  "  Redemption,  be  sure,  means  no  obliquity, 
no  round-the-corner  business  of  this  sort.  God  deals 
with  us  at  first  hand,  not  at  second  hand.  Christ's 
work  for  us  and  in  us  is  to  help  our  personaHty,  not 
to  obliterate  it ;  to  get  us  back  to  our  true  self,  not 
to  substitute  another  for  it.  Vicarious,  yes  ;  it  all 
begins  there.  The  beginning  is  all  grace,  as  the 
sun's  shining  is  all  grace.  But  it  is  a  grace  which 
does  not  insult  us.  It  will  not  save  us  by  ignoring 
what  we  are  and  what  we  have  been.  It  says 
to    us  :    "  Yes,    you    are    the    object    of    vicarious 

107 


Faith's    Certainties 

sacrifice.  Others  have  suffered  for  you.  Christ  has 
suffered  for  you.  But  that  is  not  to  spare  you 
your  own  suffering ;  you  will  bear  all  that,  for 
only  thus  could  you  become  the  person  you  are  to  be. 
You,  too,  must  pay  your  price,  and  Christ  has  shown 
you  how  to  do  it." 

Notwithstanding  all  that  has  been  done  for  us,  we 
go  on  pajang  the  price.  And  the  eternal  question 
presses  us,  *'  Is  the  price  too  high  ?  Is  what  we  are 
getting  worth  what  we  are  paying  for  it  ?  "  The 
biggest  prices  here  are  such  as  are  not  quoted  in  the 
market.  There  is  no  visible  transaction.  It  is  all  an 
exchange  in  the  soul.  Take  the  price  of  pride.  The 
main  form  of  it  to-day  is  purse  pride.  A  man  accumu- 
lates houses,  lands,  broad  possessions,  and  swells 
inwardly  to  the  dimensions  of  all  that.  He  is,  he 
thinks,  as  big  as  his  holding.  A  clearer  view  sees 
otherwise  ;  finds  the  best  part  of  him  to  be  dwindling, 
dwindling.  About  this  a  writer  of  ages  ago,  when 
the  world  was  mad  with  the  same  fever,  has  a  word 
on  it  which  we  moderns  might  well  study.  Says 
Longinus  :  "I  try  to  reckon  up,  but  I  cannot  dis- 
cover how  it  is  possible  that  we,  who  so  greatly 
honour  boundless  wealth ;  who,  to  speak  more 
truly,  make  it  a  god,  can  fail  to  receive  into  our 
souls  the  kindred  evils  which  enter  with  it.  .  .  . 
Men  will  no  longer  take  any  account  of  good  repu- 
tations. Little  by  little  the  ruin  of  their  whole  life 
is  affected ;  all  greatness  of  soul  dwindles  and 
withers,  and  ceases  to  be  emulated,  while  men 
admire  their  own  mortal  parts,  and  neglect  to 
improve  the  immortal."  The  market  price  here  seems 
to  have  been  very  little  affected  by  the  course  of  the 
ages.     Men  buy  now,  as  in  the  days  of  Longinus,  the 

io8 


The  Price 

same  thing  at  the  same  figure.  And  what  is  it  they 
buy  ?  Is  pride  a  good  value  ?  It  reduces  a  man  to 
beggary — that,  amid  all  his  show,  his  riches.  Your 
proud  man  is  a  mendicant  all  the  time.  You  can  see 
his  soul  going  in  hand  to  every  onlooker,  to 
every  dependant,  to  every  passer-by,  asking  for  its 
daily,  hourly  aliment.  It  asks  for,  implores,  the  ad- 
miring look,  the  flattering  word,  the  tribute  of  these 
outsiders  to  its  own  imperious  hunger  of  vanity. 
Without  that  tribute  constantly  administered  it 
starves.  And  what  is  this  beggar  soul  doing  with  its 
fellows  ?  Sowing  amongst  them  crops  of  envy,  of 
base  subservience,  of  all  the  mean  and  miserable 
emotions.  With  its  own  territory  a  wilderness,  it  is 
making  a  spiritual  wilderness  all  round.  If  only 
these  people  had  a  glimpse  of  imagination,  to  see 
what  they  were  doing,  for  themselves  and  for  all  the 
others  !  If  only  they  had  one  touch  of  humour — 
th^t  saving  grace  !  We  are  not  saying  that  all  rich 
men  are  proud,  are  of  this  sort.  Far  from  it.  There 
are  who  have  won  their  wealth  by  pluck  and  enter- 
prise, and  who  are  doing  their  best  with  it.  But  the 
thing  itself  is  so  horrible  a  temptation  to  mean  spirits 
and  there  are  so  many  mean  rich  men.  What  we 
want  here  to  say  is,  that  the  things  really  worth  the 
price,  worth  any  price  we  can  offer,  are  not  the 
things  we  have  spoken  of ;  not  envies  and  sub- 
serviencies and  vulgar  admirations  ;  not  the  lifting 
of  ourselves  on  the  abasement  of  others.  To  gain 
the  honest  love  of  our  fellows,  by  our  own  honest 
love  for  them  ;  a  love  which  shows  in  our  frank, 
humble  recognition  of  their  worth — the  worth  of 
the  meanest  of  them — which  shows  in  genuine  service 
for  their  betterment ;  a  love  which  is  not  satisfied  till 

109 


Faith's    Certainties 

we  have  shared  with  our  fellows  the  best  in  us,  and 
which  leaves  behind  it  an  example  to  be  followed,  a 
memory  to  be  revered — these,  and  these  only,  are  the 
values  that  are  worth  their  price. 

To  have  grasped  this  law  of  the  price  is  to  have 
grasped  the  meaning  of  Christ,  of  His  living  and  His 
dying.  It  is  the  heart  of  Christianity.  To  be  a 
Christian,  in  the  only  real  sense,  is  to  live  in  the 
the  daily  consciousness  of  all  that  is  involved  in  this 
question  of  price.  It  will  make  us  so  eager  for  the 
true  values,  so  indifferent  to  all  else.  When  we 
remember  that  all  we  have  is  at  the  cost  of  some 
others,  of  their  labour,  often  of  their  pain,  how  deep 
will  be  our  gratitude  to  them  ;  how  eager  our  desire 
to  repay  !  This  feeling  will  make  us  angry  with 
much  of  our  civilisation.  So  many  of  our  fellows  are 
paying  too  much.  When  our  newspapers  tell  us, 
as  they  did  the  other  day,  of  a  poor  girl  in  London 
dying  of  starvation,  and  of  her  room  mate,  called  as  a 
witness,  telHng  how  she  herself  had  for  months  been 
out  of  employment,  living  on  dry  bread  and  tea, 
dismissed  from  her  work  because — made  ill  by  the 
stifling  atmosphere  of  the  underground  room  she 
was  working  in — she  had  asked  for  a  brief  respite 
and  a  breath  of  air,  we  find  ourselves  in  deadly 
revolt  against  the  system  which  permits  it.  Have  we 
any  business,  any  of  us,  to  be  happy  in  an  England 
which,  steeped  in  the  luxury  of  its  comfortable  classes, 
permits  such  conditions  at  our  doors  ;  conditions 
compared  with  which  the  savagedom  of  Central 
Africa  is  a  paradise  ?  The  revolution  we  are  waiting 
for,  the  revolution  which  will  come  when  we  have 
become  Christian,  will  break  out  among  the  rich,  in 
their  fierce  revolt  against  their  own  luxury  while  their 

no 


The  Price 

brethren  can  thus  die  of  starvation  and  nakedness. 
When  we  have  become  Christian  we  shall  want  to 
pay  the  price,  the  old  redemption  price,  the  price 
He  paid,  "  who  being  rich  for  our  sakes  became 
poor,  that  we  through  His  poverty  might  become 
rich." 


Ill 


XI 

FACES 

Lamb  thought  faces  the  finest  scenery.  He  writes 
to  Wordsworth  that  "  separate  from  the  pleasure 
of  your  company,  I  don't  much  care  if  I  never  see  a 
mountain  in  my  Hfe."  He  speaks  elsewhere  of 
the  **  human  faces  without  which  the  finest  scenery 
failed  to  satisfy  his  sense  of  beauty."  Assuredly, 
nowhere  else  in  the  heavens  or  the  earth  have  we  so 
vivid  a  picture  as  is  offered  us  in  the  human  face.  In 
those  few  inches  of  surface  what  a  concentration 
of  power,  what  a  mingling  of  matter  and  of  mind  ! 
The  face  is  the  soul's  window  through  which  it  looks 
out  on  the  world  ;  through  which  the  world  in  its  turn 
reads  the  soul's  own  secret.  Think  of  the  collection 
of  faculty  massed  in  that  tiny  oval  !  Underneath,  in 
chest  and  limbs,  is  the  machinery  of  life  ;  here,  on  the 
countenance,  is  life  itself.  Its  flesh  is  charged  with 
spirit.  The  eye,  which  gives  us  the  universe  to 
farthest  worlds  ;  the  ear,  with  all  that  music  means, 
with  all  that  spoken  language  means  ;  the  mouth, 
the  gateway  of  our  food  and  drink,  of  the  air  we 
breathe,  the  organ  of  speech  ;  our  sense  of  smell, 
and  the  whole  world  of  scents  and  perfumes  ;  all  this 
and  so  much  more,  built  into  that  one  tiny  bit 
of  space  !  Every  inch  of  it  a  revelation.  What 
volumes  the  eye  tells  !     The  nose,  the  mouth,  the 

112 


Faces 

chin,  all  deciders  of  destiny.  You  will  see  a  nose  that 
tells  everything  ;  a  conquering  nose,  that  of  a 
Caesar,  a  Wellington,  that  will  crash  through  a  world  ; 
the  weak,  boneless  one,  sign  of  the  nothing  the  man  is. 
And  so  with  a  mouth,  a  chin.  All  we  are,  all  we  have 
been,  and  all  we  have  done,  carries  itself  here  in 
a  thousand  subtle  lines,  a  myriad  touches  of  the 
artist  who  is  painting  us.  Odd,  is  it  not,  that  while 
we  so  carefully  shield  the  rest  of  our  body,  by  a 
whole  strata  of  clothing,  from  the  cold  and  damp, 
that  this  part  of  us,  infinitely  the  most  delicate 
and  sensitive  of  all,  with  nerves  so  immeasurably 
finer,  nerves  whose  exquisite  texture  record  every 
minutest  change  and  shade  of  expression  ;  that  this, 
the  body's  supreme  nerve  centre,  should  be  left  open 
by  us  to  every  wind  that  blows.  Clothing,  after  all, 
is  largely  a  convention.  The  best  bit  of  us  does 
without  it. 

There  is  one  feature  in  the  face,  considered 
as  a  piece  of  nature's  artistry,  which,  as  we  think  of 
it,  makes  us  doubtful  of  one  at  least  of  Ruskin's 
dicta  in  the  matter  of  architecture.  We  remember 
his  abhorrence  of  stucco.  He  denounces  it  as  a 
hypocrisy.  He  will  have  his  surfaces  represent 
the  actual  material  of  the  structure.  Away  with  all 
falsities,  with  all  that  hides  and  misrepresents  the 
thing  beneath  !  But,  after  all,  is  he  following  nature 
here  ?  Is  that  her  way  ?  What  would  happen  to 
our  beauty  if  we  peeled  off  from  the  face  its  surface 
covering  ?  The  thought  is  not  a  pleasant  one. 
Nature  is  not  Ruskinian  here.  Is  she,  indeed, 
anywhere  ?  She  has  no  scruples  about  her  surfaces. 
Her  Matterhorn  is  the  same  thing  through  and 
through,  except  where  snow  and  ice  cover  it,  but  the 

113 


Faith's    Certainties 

mass  of  her  landscape  effects  are  thin  coverings,  that 
hide  something  far  less  beautiful  beneath.  Strip  that 
surface  layer,  and  we  should  have  a  very  ugly  world 
to  look  upon.     But  that  is  an  aside. 

We  have  spoken  of  the  human  face  as  the  greatest 
of  pictures.  Some  great  artists  are  constantly 
engaged  upon  it.  Let  us  define.  There  are  pro- 
fessional ladies  and  gentlemen  in  Bond  Street  and 
elsewhere  who  lay  claim  to  this  title,  but  we  are  not 
thinking  of  them.  Certainly  they  are  in  a  way 
proficients  in  face  architecture.  With  their  paints 
and  powders,  their  dyes  and  pincers,  their  nose 
machines,  and  other  instruments  of  the  outfit,  they 
achieve  miracles,  masterpieces  ;  annihilate  the  years, 
and  offer  cBtat.  fifty  the  suggestion  of  twenty-five.  It 
is  an  old  art,  one  of  the  oldest  in  the  world.  Baby- 
lon and  Egypt  were  proficient  in  it.  There  is  a 
curious  chapter  in  Clement  of  Alexandria  where  he 
describes  the  manner  of  *'  making  up  "  amongst  the 
Alexandrian  ladies  of  his  time.  Evidently  the  second 
century  could,  in  these  mysteries,  give  points  to  the 
twentieth.  But,  alas  !  nature  does  not  smile  on 
these  methods  ;  or,  if  she  does,  her  smile  has  too 
much  sarcasm  in  it.  She  regards  them  as  a  peddling 
trade.  What  worth  they  are,  how  far  they  go,  is 
known  to  the  lady's  maid,  who  visits  her  mistress  in 
the  morning. 

Nature  has  a  face  architecture  of  another  kind — 
august,  venerable,  sometimes  terrible.  Her  instru- 
ments are  time  and  the  will ;  the  events  that  happen 
to  a  man  ;  the  million  million  volitions  which  spring 
from  and  react  on  the  character.  The  great  graving 
tool  is  the  soul  itself.  The  other  day  it  fell  to  the 
writer  to  meet  some  friends  of  his  boyhood  ;    once 

114 


Faces 

familiar  figures  whom  he  had  not  seen  for  fifty  years. 
Here,  indeed,  was  genuine  work,  fateful  work.  What 
a  product  of  time  and  the  hours  ;  the  once  lithe  forms 
bowed  and  stiffened ;  the  once  smooth,  eager  faces 
covered  with  wrinkles  ;  eyes,  speech,  expression,  how 
changed,  transformed  !  All  the  varied  scenes  of  life, 
all  the  experiences  gone  through  ;  the  lifting  joys,  the 
poignant  sorrow  ;  all  the  secret  thoughts  of  the  heart, 
had  left  here  each  their  mark  ;  all  had  wrought  on 
the  plastic  material  and  made  this  new,  strange, 
unrecognisable  picture.  "  I  should  not  have  known 
you,"  was  on  each  side  the  startled  expression.  One 
felt  here  the  solemnity,  the  tragedy  of  living  ;  how 
each  of  us  is  adrift  on  the  current  that  carries  us 
all  away. 

Yet  the  study  of  the  face  is  not  wholly  a  sombre 
one.  It  offers  one  of  the  greatest  of  revelations. 
It  shows  us  the  profound  spirituality  of  nature.  We 
see  here  how  it  conquers  and  refines  matter,  how  it 
transfuses  it  with  the  highest  things  of  the  soul. 
Look  into  the  face  of  some  noble  character,  some 
inspired  leader  of  men.  Observe  its  strength,  its 
beauty,  its  sweetness.  It  was  not  always  like  that. 
The  new  born  child  was  a  mere  pulpy  mass,  from 
which  you  could  divine  nothing.  But  through  the 
years,  since  the  soul  awoke,  since  character  began 
to  form,  and  to  make  its  great  decisions,  the  inner 
wealth  of  the  spirit  has  been  flowing  out  upon  the 
features,  moulding,  transforming  them,  pouring  into 
their  flesh  and  blood  all  the  beauty  of  its  secret 
life.  Here  thought  has  materialised  and  matter  has 
been  spiritualised.  In  this  action  of  the  soul  upon 
the  face,  do  we  not  catch  a  glimpse  of  what  is  going 
on  in  the   universe  ?     Have   we    not  here  in   this 

115 


Faith's    Certainties 

selected  bit  of  matter  an  image,  a  prophecy,  of 
what  the  whole  world,  nature's  utmost  realm,  is  yet 
to  become  ?  The  cosmos  is  also  being  spiritualised  ; 
its  rude  chaotic  mass  is  being  wrought  on  from  within, 
and  is  yet  to  be  the  triumph  of  thought,  through 
its  utmost  borders  to  be  made  beautiful,  by  the  soul 
that  is  within  it  ! 

There  has  been  in  our  world  one  face  where,  we 
may  well  believe,  the  spiritualisation  of  matter 
reached  its  height.  We  have  had  innumerable 
pictures  of  the  face  of  Christ.  The  masters  have 
filled  with  it  the  art  galleries  of  the  world.  It 
decorates  the  palaces  of  kings,  the  rude  walls  of  the 
peasant's  home.  And  yet  we  have  no  authentic 
knowledge  of  it.  The  early  Christian  writers,  the 
Church  Fathers,  are  all  abroad  in  their  accounts. 
Justin  Martyr  says,  "  He  appeared  without  beauty;  " 
Clement  of  Alexandria,  "  He  passed  through  the 
world  unlovely  in  the  flesh  and  without  form, 
thereby  teaching  us  to  look  at  the  unseen  and  the 
incorporate  ;  "  and  that  "  He  used  a  commonplace 
form  of  body,"  and  "  was  base  in  aspect."  Tertullian 
has  it  that  "  His  body  was  devoid  not  only  of  heavenly 
lustre,  but  also  of  human  nobleness,  and  that  He 
was  not  even  pleasing  in  appearance."  Jerome,  on 
the  contrary,  declares  that  "  there  was  something 
starry  in  His  appearance  "  ;  while  Augustine  speaks 
of  Him  as  "  beautiful  as  an  infant  ;  beautiful  on 
earth,  beautiful  in  heaven."  It  is  evident  we  can 
attach  no  authority  to  any  of  these  utterances. 
They  are  dictated  by  theological  considerations. 
The  first  cited  conform  to  the  prophetic  word  that 
He  should  be  "  a  root  out  of  a  dry  ground,  without 
form    or    comeliness."     The    latter     view    is     also 

ii6 


Faces 

theological,  and  not  less  un historical.  It  is  better 
here  to  found  ourselves  on  nature  and  her  processes. 
We  know  not  what  the  features  were.  One  thing  we 
may  be  sure  of  ;  that  great  soul  could  not  fail  to 
impress  itself,  its  nobleness,  its  purity,  on  the  fleshy 
envelope.  The  Transfiguration  story  is  the  story  of  a 
life,  as  well  as  of  a  moment.  That  face — the  face 
which,  as  Browning  has  it,  "  far  from  vanish, 
grows.  .  .  .  becomes  our  universe  that  feels  and 
knows " ;  the  face  in  which,  as  men  looked  on  it, 
they  found  their  rest-giver,  their  burden-bearer, 
whose  smile  drew  them  from  the  tax-gatherer's 
custom-house,  from  the  fisherman's  boat — carried 
its  own  revelation.  The  peace,  the  power,  the  love- 
liness within,  mirrored  themselves  there. 

The  painters,  ancient  and  modern,  have  concen- 
trated their  powers  on  the  human  face.  Nothing 
elsewhere  so  subtle,  so  difficult,  so  wonderful.  The 
face  of  nature  at  her  sublimest,  her  weirdest,  in  all 
the  variety  of  her  moods,  has  no  such  power  of  hne. 
Yet  there  is  a  greater  art  than  that  of  portrait  paint- 
ing, one  to  which  the  best  mind  of  the  world  is 
learning  to  devote  itself.  It  is  that  of  a  new  face- 
creation.  So  long  the  human  countenance  has  been, 
in  the  mass  of  examples,  only  a  parody  of  what  it 
might  be.  Such  a  host  of  malign  artists  have  been 
at  work  there.  Fear,  anguish,  remorse,  lust, 
cunning,  despair  have,  through  ages  and  ages,  written 
themselves  on  its  features.  So  many  canvases, 
ready  for  beauty  to  imprint  itself  on  them,  and  now 
all  ugly  with  the  wreck  of  character,  with  the  marks  of 
bestial  passion  !  Think  of  what  that  base  animal 
painter,  drink,  is  doing  in  our  land.  The  other  day, 
sitting  in   a   country  house  in    rural   England,    we 

117 


Faith's    Certainties 

heard  the  story  of  some  immediate  neighbours.  A 
couple  of  hundred  yards  off  was  a  noble  mansion, 
deserted,  falling  into  decay.  Its  owner,  a  Ceylon 
planter,  had  died  there  two  years  ago — of  drink.  He 
left  the  house  and  adjoining  property  to  his  brother. 
In  a  few  months  he,  too,  had  passed  away,  also  a 
drink  victim.  In  the  village  street,  which  we  saw 
from  the  window,  stood  a  large  red-brick  house.  It 
was  the  property,  we  were  told,  of  a  wealthy  woman 
who  lived  alone  there,  drinking  herself  to  death. 
It  had  been  left  her  by  her  brother,  who  in  mid-Hfe 
had  died  of  drink.  Their  father  was  a  drunkard. 
Here  was  the  history  of  an  acre  or  two  of  ground.  Is  it 
an  exceptional  history  ?  Such  stories  are  every- 
where ;  the  stories  of  every  village,  of  every  town, 
of  every  street.  Here  is  the  python  that  is 
strangling  us  ;  here  is  the  demon  artist  that  is  smear- 
ing human  faces  with  its  fiery  hue,  the  hue  of  death. 
Are  we  fatalists,  that  we  submit  to  it  so  easily  ? 

There  is  no  fatalism  here,  but  only  want  of  will  and 
an  organisation  of  the  nation's  common  goodness, 
united  to  its  common  sense.  Let  us  not  talk  of  the 
fatalism  of  heredity ;  of  the  face's  fatalism.  At 
first  sight  it  would  seem  as  though  everything  were 
fixed  there  ;  that  the  face  was  a  finality.  When  you 
see  the  puffed  cheek,  the  hanging  jaw,  the  sensuous 
mouth,  you  say,  "  Here  is  destiny  ;  there  is  no  escape 
from  such  features.  This  man  is  and  will  be  what 
he  is  ;  and  he  will  transmit  his  ugly  self  to  his 
children."  Assuredly,  it  looks  almost  a  finality  ;  but 
it  is  not.  The  bottom  fact  to  remember  here  is  that 
it  is  not  feature  that  creates  character,  but  character 
that  creates  feature.  Change  a  man's  heart  and  you 
will  begin  to  change  his  face.     There  are  creative 

ii8 


Faces 

forces  here,  which  we  may  call  to  our  aid,  that  are 
stronger  than  heredity.  You  need  not  read 
Weissmann  to  be  assured  of  that.  The  history  of 
slum  children,  the  offspring  of  vice  and  degradation, 
taken  out  of  these  surroundings  and  put  in  a  whole- 
some physical  and  moral  environment,  is  a  proof  of 
it.  That  history  is  one  of  marvels,  one  of  the  most 
hopeful  things  in  the  world.  You  get  eighty  per 
cent,  of  them,  who  have  begun  so  badly,  turning  out 
well.  The  human  character  is  the  most  plastic  thing. 
We  know,  alas  !  what  evil  can  make  of  it.  But  we 
know,  also,  thank  heaven,  what  good  can  make  of  it, 
and  we  have  powers  of  good  around  us  that  we  will 
wager  against  all  the  powers  of  evil.  With  that 
power  scientifically  organised  we  can  fight  drink  and 
all  the  seven  devils  that  afflict  us,  and  fight  to  win. 
What  a  manufacture  is  here  before  us  ;  the  manu- 
facture of  good,  beautiful  faces,  index  of  beautiful 
souls  !  Faces  from  which  have  been  banished  the 
dread  lineaments  which  guilt  and  fear  and  base 
passion  have  written  there,  and  which,  as  we  look 
upon  them,  shall  make  us  exclaim  with  Miranda  in 
The  Tempest : — 

"  O  wonder  ! 
How  many  goodly  creatures  are  there  here  ! 
How  beauteous  mankind  is  !     O  brave  new  world 
That  has  such  people  in't  !  " 

An  artistry  this  for  us  all  to  work  in;  which  will 
surpass  assuredly  all  that  brush  or  pencil  can 
produce ! 

Have  we  ever  thought  of  the  theology  of  the  laugh- 
ing face  ?  Man  is  the  animal  who  laughs.  There 
is  no  other  creature  that  knows  how  to  do  it.  When 
you  hear  children  laugh,  still  more  when  you  hear  a 

Z19 


Faith's    Certainties 

man  laugh,  you  are  listening  to  the  best  music  the 
world  offers.  That  we  have  muscles  formed  for  this, 
and  the  soul  formed  with  this  in  it,  what  a  refutation 
is  it  of  all  the  bad  theologies  ;  of  all  the  notions 
of  a  morose,  man-hating  destiny  !  A  good,  honest 
laugh  blows  all  that  to  the  winds.  The  God  who 
made  laughter  is,  be  sure,  a  good  and  a  loving  God. 
Laughter  would  never  have  been  heard  on  earth 
had  it  not  been  first  heard  in  heaven.  To  hear  it 
is  to  be  assured  that  we  are  in  a  good,  honest  world, 
a  world  with  a  merry  heart  in  it,  that  means  well 
with  us.  When  I  hear  a  child's  laugh,  when  I  look 
on  its  joyous  countenance  I  see  a  revelation  of 
the  divdne  thought  about  us,  of  its  intentions  towards 
us,  which  all  the  gloomy  creeds  of  a  dyspeptic 
theology  can  never  persuade  me  out  of.  Who  can 
believe  in  a  cursed,  a  damned  world,  while  the  sound 
carries  this  in  it  ?  The  world's  laughter,  and  what 
it  means,  should  be  among  the  first  articles  of  our 
creed. 

And  have  you  ever,  in  your  theological  quests, 
studied  the  face  of  the  dead?  Is  there  not  also  a 
revelation  there  ?  We  have  looked  upon  many — 
faces  of  poor,  insignificant  people,  faces  of  indifferent 
livers  ;  also  upon  great  faces.  And  what  do  we  find 
there  ?  For  one  thing,  the  deep  religiousness  of 
death.  All  religion  is  there ;  its  mystery,  its 
sublimity.  No  one  can  pass  irreverently  into  a 
death-chamber.  The  face  there,  in  its  grand,  calm 
immobility,  with  everything  of  littleness  wiped 
out,  speaks  of  the  essential  greatness  of  man,  of 
the  soul.  And  is  there  not  here  something  more  ? 
Is  there  not  here  nature's  seal  of  uttermost  forgive- 
ness, her  seal  of  the  goodness,  the  love  that  is  above 

120 


Faces 

all  ?  That  rugged,  worn  face,  furrowed  in  life  with 
so  many  lines  of  care  and  struggle — she  has  wiped  out 
all  that  as  though  it  were  nothing,  and  brought  to  it 
the  sweetness,  the  freshness  of  a  little  child.  A 
child  we  come  into  this  world,  with  loving  faces 
all  around  us.  And  this  dead,  beautiful  face — is  it 
not  that  also  of  a  child,  born  into  another  world, 
and  again  with  loving  faces  all  around  it  ? 

There  are  great  sights  yet  in  front  of  us.  The 
world's  face  is  to  be  made  beautiful,  more  beautiful 
than  it  is.  And  the  Spirit  of  Holiness  which  has 
worked  through  all  the  ages,  and  now  works,  will 
recreate  the  human  face.  It  is  for  us  to  join  in  that 
noble  artistry,  inspired  to  our  task  by  that  greatest 
of  all  words  on  this  theme  :  "  Blessed  are  the  pure 
in  heart,  for  they  shall  see  God."  The  face  of  God  : 
we  are  to  see  that. 


121 


XII 

OF  DEEP-ROOTED  SOULS 

In  a  sense  we  are  all  deep-rooted,  rooted  as  deep 
as  the  universe  itself.  We  are  part  of  a  system  of 
things  of  which  no  beginning  is  discernible,  and  no 
end.  Our  bodies  are,  in  their  essence,  as  old  as  the 
seas  and  the  everlasting  hills.  They  draw  from 
them  and  will  go  back  to  them.  There  never  was  a 
time  in  which  they  were  not ;  there  will  be  never  a 
time  in  which  they  cease  to  be.  Our  present  sense  of 
weakness,  of  decay,  is  only  a  temporary  sense.  Our 
ultimate  being  is  in  strength — the  strength  of  eter- 
nity. When  our  bodies  die  it  is  for  them  to  begin  a 
new  life,  under  new  forms,  but  always  a  being, 
a  life.  While  we  tenant  them,  the  process  is  ever 
going  on.  And  every  moment  the  universe  is 
passing  into  them,  they  into  the  universe.  And 
mind  is  as  old  as  matter.  There  has  never  been  one 
without  the  other.  There  could  never  have  been 
matter  without  a  mind  to  know  it  as  matter.  Our 
mind,  be  sure,  has  this  same  quality  of  everlasting- 
ness.  In  what  anterior  forms,  in  what  posterior 
forms,  who  knows  ?  We  remember  the  curious 
speculation  of  Leibnitz  that  all  souls  are  perfected  in 
a  sort  of  organised  body,  which  at  the  time  of 
generation  has  undergone  a  certain  transformation 
and  augmentation.     We  prefer  here  what  Emerson 

122 


of  Deep-rooted   Souls 

has  to  say  :  "I  cannot  tell  if  the  wonderful  qualities 
which  house  to-day  in  this  mortal  frame  shall  ever 
reassemble  in  equal  activity  in  a  similar  frame,  or 
whether  they  have  had  before  a  natural  history. 
But  this  one  thing  I  know,  that  these  qualities  did 
not  now  begin  to  exist,  cannot  be  sick  with  my  sick- 
ness, nor  buried  in  my  grave,  but  that  they  circulate 
throughout  the  universe.  Before  the  world  was, 
they  were." 

In  one  form  or  another  we  are,  then,  and  shall 
continue  to  be,  old  inhabitants  of  this  universe, 
rooted,  we  say,  in  its  everlastingness.  But  all  that 
is  a  somewhat  far  cry.  What  we  want  to  deal 
with  here  is  not  so  much  our  fortunes  in  the  far 
past  or  in  the  far  future,  but  those  of  to-day  and 
to-morrow.  We  are  thinking  of  the  sort  of  souls  we 
are  producing,  and  are  likely  to  produce  under  the 
influences  of  our  present  civilisation.  It  is  so  much  a 
question  of  the  soil  they  are  growing  in ;  of  its  depth 
and  richness.  Souls  are  here  very  much  like  trees. 
Like  them  they  depend  on  two  things — their  inward 
nature  and  their  environment.  You  cannot  make  a 
kidney  bean  into  an  oak  by  any  manuring  process. 
On  the  other  hand,  you  cannot  grow  oaks  in  Lap- 
land, or  in  the  sand  of  the  Sahara  desert.  Give  your 
acorn  the  right  soil,  a  soil  with  depth  in  it  and  rich- 
ness of  quality,  and  you  have  promise  of  your  oak, 
that  tree  of  centuries.  And  do  you  notice,  given  its 
chance,  what  a  wonderful  individuality,  one  may  say, 
what  a  force  of  character,  your  tree  develops  !  With 
an  infallible  instinct,  its  roots,  searching  amid  all  the 
varieties  the  underlying  earth  contains,  accept  what 
is  good  for  it,  what  feeds  its  life,  and  rejects  all  else. 
It  knows  what  it  wants,  and  keeps  to  that ;    absorbs 

123 


Faith's    Certainties 

it  into  its  very  self.     To  those  other  things  it  presents 
a  relation  only  of  contact  and  of  quiet  rejection. 

It  is  here  that  oakhood  offers  so  potent  a  lesson 
to  manhood.  The  deep-rooted  oak  has  so  much 
to  say  concerning  the  deep-rooted  soul.  We  are 
thronged  to-day  with  schemes  of  education  ;  we  are 
on  the  quest  for  the  method,  the  scientific  method, 
of  producing  the  best  men  and  the  best  women. 
Everybody  sees  that  it  is  largely  an  affair  of  soil, 
of  the  kind  of  underground  earth  we  are  preparing 
on  which  the  soul-germ  shall  root  itself  and  find  its 
nourishment.  We  are  all  agreed,  too,  that  the 
soil  shall  be  such  as  shall  feed  the  right  kind  of 
character ;  shall  help  the  growth  of  the  right 
affections,  of  the  high  and  noble  ideals.  And  for 
this  we  all  say  that  it  must  be  rooted  in  truth,  the 
essential  truth  of  life.  But  what,  and  where,  is  that 
truth  ;  how  is  it  to  be  found  ?  Here  we  are  at 
issue.  The  twentieth  century  is  at  a  vital  point ;  a 
point  where  there  is  deadly  disagreement.  How 
critical  the  issue  is,  and  how  ominous  the  disagree- 
ment, is  brought  vividly  before  us  in  a  small  work 
issued  by  Messrs.  Williams  &  Norgate  in  their 
Home  University  Library,  entitled,  "  A  History  of 
Freedom  of  Thought."  The  author  is  Professor 
J.  B.  Bury,  Regius  Professor  of  Modern  History  at 
Cambridge  University.  Speaking  from  that  authori- 
tative vantage  ground,  the  Professor  offers  us  what 
he  conceives  to  be  a  true  history  of  human  progress 
up  to  the  present  day,  and  an  indication  of  the  path 
it  is  to  pursue  in  the  future.  Let  us  see  the  kind  of 
soil  in  which,  according  to  the  Professor,  the  future 
generations  are  to  grow.  The  book  is,  from  begin- 
ning to  end,  frankly  materialistic.      Our  first  feehng 

124 


of  Deep-rooted   Souls 

about  it  is  the  oddity  of  the  title.  It  is  called  a 
history  of  the  freedom  of  thought ;  its  entire  subject 
is  the  non-freedom  of  thought,  the  complete  slavery 
of  the  human  spirit.  We  are  chained  beings  in  a 
chained  universe,  the  controlling  powers  of  which  are 
matter  and  force.  The  religious  view,  which  offers 
us  a  universe  beginning  with  mind  and  resting  on 
love,  with  man  as  an  offspring  of  that  mind,  endowed 
with  freedom,  and  responsible  for  his  actions  to  that 
mind ;  in  short,  the  whole  idea  of  God,  freedom 
and  immortality,  is  dismissed  as  illusion,  with  no 
scientific  basis. 

There  is  no  such  thing  as  a  creative  intelligence, 
a  divine  purpose  in  the  world.  As  a  specimen  of  the 
kind  of  argument  by  which  this  hopeful  conclusion 
is  sustained,  we  may  cite  the  Professor's  treatment 
of  the  design  argument.  He  thinks  it  sufficient  for 
the  exploding  of  this  argument  to  point  to  the 
imperfections  that  appear  in  nature,  in  structures 
such  as  the  human  body.  He  quotes  Helmholtz 
as  saying  of  the  eye  that  "if  an  optician  sent  it  to 
me  as  an  instrument,  I  should  send  it  back  with 
reproaches  for  the  carelessness  of  his  work,  and 
demand  the  return  of  my  money."  So  we  are  to 
believe  that  because  the  thing  may  be  bettered, 
there  is  no  design  !  It  is  curious  reasoning.  Would 
any  man  conclude  of  a  watch,  because  it  was  possible 
to  produce  a  better,  that  there  was  no  design  in  it  ? 
Would  a  Helmholtz  hold  that  because  the  watch  was 
imperfect,  it  was  the  work,  not  of  an  optician,  but 
of  the  mindless  operation  of  a  nebulous  mist  ?  If 
he  did  say  that,  would  it  suggest  to  us  anything 
beyond  the  enormous  faith  of  philosophers  in  search 
of  an    atheistic    conclusion  ?     Has    it    occurred    to 

125 


Faith^s    Certainties 

these  philosophers  that  in  creating  an  imperfect 
world,  the  mind  behind  it — supposing  a  mind — 
may  have  reasons  of  its  own  for  a  temporary  im- 
perfection ?  That  there  were  reasons  for  starting  us 
in  an  imperfect  world,  as  a  scene  of  education  for  us, 
as  a  condition  of  our  own  education  in  working  with 
that  mind,  as  co-operators  in  improving  it,  and  by 
that  means  of  improving  ourselves  ?  Has  it  occurred 
to  them  that  if  this  mind  was  one  which  contem- 
plated as  a  final  end  the  development  of  human 
spirits,  in  strength  and  happiness,  that  the  end 
would  be  better  secured  by  putting  us  in  a  world 
where  there  was  something  for  us  to  do,  rather  than 
in  one  where  everything  was  done,  and  ourselves 
placed  there,  with  our  hands  in  our  pockets,  simply 
as  idle  lookers  on  ? 

And  we  say  that  this  is  not  a  true  history  of 
freedom  of  thought,  but  an  entirely  partisan  and  one- 
sided one.  It  gives  us  the  supposed  triumph  of 
materialism.  It  leaves  out  the  free  thought,  the 
conclusions  of  equally  free  and  cultivated  minds 
that  have  arrived  at  a  different  conclusion.  It 
attacks  Christianity  for  its  supposed  opposition  to 
freedom.  It  leaves  out  all  it  has  done  for  the 
deepening  and  enriching  of  the  human  spirit.  It 
mentions  Hegel  as  an  opponent  of  Christianity.  It 
has  nothing  to  say  of  the  Hegelian  Caird  of  Balliol, 
of  how  he  shows  what  a  Christian  a  Hegelian  can 
be.  It  has  no  mention  of  Fichte,  or  of  what  he 
thought  of  the  Christianity  of  Christ.  The  history 
is  supposed  to  be  up  to  date,  but  we  find  in  it  nothing 
of  Martineau,  with  his  magnificent  vindication  of  the 
spirituality  of  th^  cosmos,  no  word  of  Dr.  Ward's 
"  Realm  of  Ends,"  nothing  of  Romanes,  nothing  of 

126 


of  Deep-rooted   Souls 

Eucken,  who  is  revolutionising  German  thought  ; 
and  not  a  word  of  Bergson,  of  the  great  argument 
by  which  he  shows  how  the  necessitarians  have  been 
all  along  attacking  the  problem  of  free  will  from  the 
wrong  end  with  a  wrong  conclusion  ;  nothing  of 
Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  of  Sir  William  Crookes — nothing, 
in  fact,  of  that  whole  intellectual  process  by  which 
minds  of  the  first  eminence  in  science  and  philosophy 
have  been  delivering  us  from  the  slough  of  fatalism, 
from  the  nightmare  of  a  chance-begotten  world,  and 
giving  our  poor  humanity  renewed  reasons  for  hope, 
for  aspirations,  for  noble  living  ! 

A  fine  soil  this,  surely,  which  our  professor  is 
preparing  for  young  Cambridge  and  young  England 
to  grow  in  !  What  room,  what  nourishment  in  it 
for  the  spiritual  life  of  man  ?  What  room  for  the 
soul's  highest  exercises  ;  for  reverence,  for  love,  for 
purity,  for  self-sacrifice  ;  what  room  for  all  this  in 
a  world  which  has,  back  of  it,  no  object  of  reverence, 
no  love,  no  purity  ;  but  only  soulless  atoms,  with 
chance  as  their  governor  ;  and  with  nothing  in  front 
of  it  but  blank  annihilation  ?  What  room  for 
courage,  except  the  courage  of  despair  ?  The  "  free- 
dom "  it  offers  us  is  the  Horatian  freedom,  to 
"  pluck  the  day,  for  there  is  no  to-morrow "  ;  a 
freedom  to  eat  and  drink,  for  to-morrow  we  die. 
Against  reasonings  of  this  kind — very  poor  reason- 
ing at  best — we  prefer  with  Pascal  to  rely  on  the 
heart's  reasonings,  the  soul's  deepest  instincts.  The 
heart's  instinct  tells  us  that  our  noblest  thought, 
instead  of  being  above  the  actuality  of  the  universe, 
is  immeasurably  below  it.  And  the  verdict  of  the 
truest  feeling  is  ever  a  religious  verdict.  We 
remember    here    brave    Dr.    Johnson's    remark    on 

127 


Faith's   Certainties 

Hume's  nihilism,  "  All  that  Hume  has  advanced  had 
passed  through  my  own  mind  long  before."  In 
spite  of  Hume  the  Doctor  would  trust  his  heart's 
verdict.  All  the  great  souls  have  rooted  themselves 
deeper  than  in  matter  and  force.  Our  twentieth 
century  will  have  to  find  some  better  soil  than 
this  if,  in  its  turn,  it  is  to  produce  great  souls.  It 
has  no  large  harvest  of  them  just  now.  It  is  funny 
to  note  the  condescending  air  with  which  our 
modern  chatterers  talk  of  "  the  Victorian  age,"  as  if 
any  of  them  can  compare  for  a  moment  with  the 
voices  of  that  age  ;  with  Tennyson  and  Browning, 
with  Dickens  and  Thackeray  and  George  Eliot. 
And  all  these  were  deeply  religious  spirits.  In  the 
age  of  Darwin  and  evolution,  and  the  most  revo- 
lutionary discoveries  in  the  realm  of  matter,  they  had 
struck  deep  into  a  realm  beyond  it.  We  mention 
George  Eliot.  She  had  broken  loose  from  the 
dogmatic  creeds.  She  had  translated  Feuerbach 
and  Strauss ;  was  the  companion  of  Lewes,  the 
intimate  of  Herbert  Spencer,  the  admirer  of  Comte. 
But  to  the  end  her  heart  was  in  religion.  Daily  her 
reading  was  in  the  Bible  which  she  loved.  She  writes 
to  D'Albert  :  "  I  have  not  returned  to  dogmatic 
Christianity,  to  the  acceptance  of  any  set  of  doctrines 
as  a  creed  ;  but  I  see  in  it  the  highest  expression  of 
the  religious  sentiment  that  has  yet  found  its  place 
in  the  history  of  mankind,  and  I  have  the  profoundest 
interest  in  the  inward  life  of  sincere  Christians  in  all 
ages."  And  where  her  heart  lay — the  heart  which 
is  man's  surest  guide— is  evident  in  all  her  works. 
In  "  Adam  Bcde,"  the  freshest  fruit  of  her  genius,  the 
heroine  is  Dinah  Morris,  the  woman  preacher.  It  is 
she  who  exhibits  the  finest  fruits  of  character,  the 

128 


of  Deep-rooted  Souls 

highest  devotion,  the  most  all-enduring  love.  It  is 
she  to  whom  all  the  neighbours  go  in  their  hour  of 
need,  to  whom  they  turn  as  the  best  they  know.  It 
is  she  to  whom,  alone  of  all  others,  poor  Hetty  Sorrel, 
in  her  condemned  cell,  finally  turns  for  confession, 
and  for  the  heahng  of  her  broken  heart.  The  deepest 
in  George  EHot  is  there,  the  deepest  expression  of  that 
centre  of  truth,  the  truth  of  feeling. 

A  piece  of  literature  we  are  much  in  want  of  is 
a  natural  history  of  great  souls.  It  should  be  a 
scientific  history,  a  world  history.  Some  important 
chapters  in  it  on  the  negative  side  would  be  the 
natural  history  of  small  ones.  We  want  a  clear 
view  of  the  conditions  which  make  for  the  two 
products.  We  should  get  a  truer  view  of  million- 
airism,  luxury,  materialistic  pursuits  and  negative 
ideas  when  we  learn  what  they  have  done  towards 
growing  men ;  and  a  truer,  a  more  optimistic  view  of 
the  world's  pain  and  suffering,  its  toil  and  difficulty, 
when  we  perceive  the  spiritual  product  of  all  that. 
Assuredly,  we  shall  find  one  thing,  that  materiaHsm 
has  never  provided  a  soil  deep  enough  and  rich 
enough  for  high  natures  to  reach  their  strength  and 
stature.  How  luminous  is  the  world  history  here  ! 
Socrates  dies  for  his  heresy,  his  "  irreHgion."  But 
what  is  his  heresy  ?  Read  the  "  Apology,"  read  the 
*'  Phaedo."  These  souls  are  aU  rooted  in  the 
spiritual ;  they  have  a  leaping-off  place  from  the 
seen  to  the  unseen.  Cicero,  in  his  final  hour, 
knowing  his  fate  under  the  Roman  triumvirate, 
shows  us  where  his  roots  are.  "  I  do  not  repent  of 
having  lived,  because  I  have  lived  so  as  not  to  have 
been  born  in  vain  ;  but  I  go  from  this  life  as  from  an 
inn  and  not  an  abiding  place.     Nature  has  given  to 

129 


Faith's    Certainties 

man  the  terrestrial  world  to  stay  in  it  awhile,  not  to 
remain  there.  O  great  day,  which  shall  liberate 
me  from  this  sordid  scene  to  rejoin  the  celestial 
assembly,  the  divine  congress  of  souls  !  " 

These  great  souls  of  antiquity  struck  their  roots 
deep.  They  sought  the  best,  wherever  they  could 
find  it.  But  since  then  the  soil  has  become  in- 
comparably richer.  Philosophy  had  already  found 
that  love  was  the  greatest  thing  in  the  world.  It  had 
said  it  magnificently  in  the  formula  of  the  Stoic 
Cleanthes  :  "  Love  begins  with  father  and  mother. 
From  the  family  it  goes  to  the  district,  to  the  city, 
to  the  multitude.  It  goes  on  and  becomes  the  holy 
love  of  all  the  world."  But  with  Christianity,  with 
Christ,  a  new  warmth  reached  the  soul.  The 
Divine  love,  the  sense  of  love,  holy,  self-sacrificing 
love,  as  the  centre  of  things,  which  the  heart  of  man 
everywhere  yearned  for,  became  realised,  actualised ; 
spoke,  breathed,  lived,  in  the  Man  of  Nazareth.  In 
seeing,  hearing  Him,  the  fainting  heart  of  humanity 
found  what  God  was,  and  in  that  knowledge  lived 
again.  The  secret  of  the  Church's  strength,  as 
Matthew  Arnold  has  it,  was  in  its  new,  overflowing 
joy.  Here  was  a  new  sphere  for  the  soul,  a  new  soil 
in  which  to  push  its  roots.  Here  was  the  element  in 
which  all  its  faculty  of  veneration,  of  affection,  of 
loyalty,  of  service,  could  bloom  into  flower  and  fruit. 
As  Eucken  says  :  "  Christianity  meant  an  immense 
deepening  of  the  human  spirit."  Science  is  apt  to 
reproach  the  after  Christian  ages,  as  a  period  of 
arrest  in  the  progress  of  knowledge.  But  it  was  not 
the  arrest  of  humanity.  Do  we  suppose,  we  who 
believe  in  an  ordered  evolution,  that  any  one  age 
of   that   evolution   could   be   a  mistake  ?     There    is 

130 


of  Deep-rooted   Souls 

no  blunder  in  evolution.  There  may  have  been  a 
stay  in  the  development  of  one  side  of  faculty.  But 
it  was  that  another  backward  side  might  catch  up. 
Admit  there  was  a  pause  in  the  matter  of  world- 
knowledge.  About  that  we  may  say  with  Hoffding, 
"  The  pauses  in  the  world  course  may  last  very  long, 
but  only  he  who  is  able  to  weave  them  into  their 
inner  connection  with  what  went  before  and  what 
follows  after  can  understand  their  value,  and  rest 
assured  they  are  something  more  than  mere  inter- 
ruptions." What  Christianity  has  meant  for 
character,  for  the  opening  out  of  the  finer  qualities 
of  spirit ;  what  it  has  meant  as  a  stay  in  trouble,  a 
gladness  in  hardest  poverty,  a  hope  in  life  and  death, 
only  those  can  understand  who  have  first  tried  to  live 
without  it,  and  since  have  lived  with  and  in  it. 

To-day  we  have  the  richest  of  all  soils  for  man  to 
root  in.  We  have  all  the  glorious  wealth  of  the 
Christian  deposit,  and  mingled  with  it  all  that 
knowledge  of  the  universe  which  modern  science  has 
opened.  The  two  are,  in  the  best  minds,  working 
together  to  a  larger  synthesis,  to  a  vaster  life.  The 
thought  of  to-day  is  following  the  path  opened  by 
Schelling,  who,  in  his  later  period,  became  mainly 
occupied  by  bringing  about  the  rebirth  of  religion 
through  the  operation  of  science  in  its  supremest 
form.  And  science  in  its  supremest  form  will  be 
occupied  by  the  mystery  of  the  soul  as  much  as  with 
the  mystery  of  matter.  It  will  not  rest  with  the 
something  to  know ;  it  must  have  also  someone  to 
love.  It  will  have  learned  that  goodness  is  higher 
than  knowledge,  and  that  the  conditions  of  human 
goodness  are  given  not  in  revelations  of  matter,  but 
in  revelations  of  the  spirit. 

131 


Faith*s    Certainties 

This  theme  is  a  personal  one  for  us  all.  To  make 
any  success  of  life  we  must  get  our  roots  deep  into  it. 
If  we  are  only  deep  enough  rooted  we  can  grow  tall 
without  fear.  We  must  have  a  self  developed  in  us 
which,  like  the  oak,  knows,  amid  all  the  elements  it 
meets,  what  to  choose  and  assimilate,  what  to  reject. 
With  that  in  us  we  can  move  amid  all  the  experiences, 
all  the  clash  of  opposition,  knowing  what  elixirs  they 
contain.  Welcome  every  new  experience,  the  new 
burden,  even  the  new  sorrow.  Let  them  perform 
their  dreadest  function  !  Is  it  not  to  enrich  the  soil, 
to  drive  its  roots  deeper  into  the  things  everlasting  ? 
Blessed  difficulties  of  life,  which  compel  us  to  find  our 
roots  in  God  ! 


132 


XIII 

RENUNCIATION 

Says  Goethe,  "  Renunciation  once  for  all,  in  view 
of  the  eternal."  But  though  Goethe  said  it,  the 
subject  to-day  is  not  popular.  Since  Goethe  we 
have  had  Nietzsche,  with  his  doctrine  of  self- 
assertion  at  all  costs.  Christianity  is  with  him  so 
poor  an  affair  because  it  makes  so  much  of  self-denial, 
of  humility,  of  giving  up  ;  the  morality,  he  affirms, 
of  a  subject,  defeated  race.  We  are  to  be  all  for  our- 
selves, with  small  regard  for  the  other  man.  The 
superman,  the  man  of  strength,  mighty  in  will  and  in 
faculty,  is  to  rise  upon  the  shoulders  of  the  less 
inclined.  "  Be  hard  "  is  the  watchword.  Let  the 
weak  find  their  place — at  the  bottom.  The  spoils  to 
the  victors,  and  vcb  victis  !  The  doctrine  is  popular 
because  it  fits  in  with  the  modern  temper,  with  its 
materialism,  its  lust  of  pleasure,  its  scepticism  about 
the  spiritual  values.  Even  woman,  up  to  now  the 
refuge  of  idealism,  has  caught  the  infection.  Her 
new  role  is  to  assert  herself,  to  fight  for  all  her  rights, 
a  role  she  is  carrying  out  with  some  vigour  just  now. 
And  so  we  find  ourselves  in  a  scrambling  world,  where 
"  beggar  my  neighbour "  is  the  favourite  game. 
Renunciation  !  Tis  an  ugly  word.  It  smells 
of  the  middle  ages,  of  the  monk's  cell,  of  a  starved 
life.     It  is  like  that  other  disagreeable  word"  hell/' 

133 


Faith's    Certainties 

"  not  to  be  mentioned  to  ears  polite."  Why  bring  it 
up  to  disturb  our  gaiety,  to  arouse  in  us  all  these 
morose  reflections  ? 

And  yet,  somehow,  it  has  got  into  the  language, 
into  all  languages,  and  is  hkely  to  remain.  It  will 
be  hard  to  dislodge,  for  it  is  one  of  nature's  words,  a 
word  built  out  of  actual  experiences,  a  word  framed 
in  the  very  structure  of  the  soul.  And  the  thing, 
whether  we  like  it  or  not,  will  be  one  of  the  great  facts 
of  our  life — if  we  live  long  enough.  Our  attitude 
towards  it  will  make  all  the  difference  to  us, 
all  the  difference  between  a  life-success  or  a  life-failure. 
And  we  need  not  be  frightened  away  from  it  by  any 
fear  of  a  pessimistic  conclusion.  For  nature,  while 
teaching  us  to  renounce,  while  compelhng  us  to  it, 
does  not  teach  us  to  grieve  over  it — far  otherwise,  if 
we  will  only  look  deep  enough. 

For  nature,  we  say,  compels  us  to  renounce.  She 
begins  the  process  early,  and  she  carries  it  on  to  our 
last  moment.  There  is  a  certain  humour  in  her 
method.  She  is  an  inveterate  joker,  and  in  all  her 
processes  will  have  her  laugh.  She  dangles  her 
dainties  before  us,  gives  us  our  bite,  and  in  the 
moment  of  enjoyment  whisks  them  away.  She 
begins  early,  we  say.  Observe  her  dealing  with 
babyhood.  The  child  comes  in,  lord  of  all.  The 
babe,  the  peasant's  babe,  is  above  any  emperor.  His 
majesty's  majesty  does  not  affect  it  in  the  least.  It 
will  offer  him  no  homage,  but  exact  it.  No  cringing, 
no  stooping,  no  adulation  on  its  side.  Unless 
emperor  pays  his  respects  let  him  look  out  for  snubs  ! 
It  is  a  glorious  sovereignty,  this  of  the  beginner. 
But  it  does  not  last.  A  year  or  so,  and  our  baby  is 
fallen  from  its  throne.       It  takes  its  rank,  a  low  one, 

134 


Renunciation 

to  know  itself  henceforth  as  a  poor  struggler  in  a 
struggHng  world.  And  the  king,  on  his  side,  is  he 
better  off  ?  Kinghood,  what  a  renunciation  is 
there  !  So  much  that  is  a  free  gift  to  his  fellows  is 
denied  to  him.  Not  for  him  the  boons  of  privacy, 
the  nobody's  freedom  ;  not  for  him  the  joys  of 
chmbing.  Think  of  the  monotony  of  being  always 
at  the  top  !  After  an  hour  amid  all  those  biting 
winds,  all  that  bleakness,  we  want  to  get  down  again 
to  the  peace  of  the  lowlands.  But  he  must  always 
stop  there. 

Do  we  note  how,  in  nature's  scheme  for  us,  every 
act  of  ours,  every  volition  is  a  renunciation  ?  To 
get  something  we  have  always  to  give  up  something. 
If  you  do  this  you  cannot  do  that.  The  man  who 
elects  to  be  a  musician,  a  specialist  of  any  sort,  turns 
his  back  on  a  thousand  pleasant  things.  The  student 
who  buries  himself  in  his  books  is  losing  all  the  joy 
of  the  open  air.  To  be  abstemious  you  forgo 
the  drinker's  delight.  There  must  be  some  fine 
sensations  there,  at  least  for  certain  throats,  or  the 
world's  drink  bill  had  been  less.  We  feel  the  pang 
which  drew  from  poor  Lamb  the  cry  :  "  Must  I  then 
leave  you,  gin,  rum,  brandy,  aqua  vitae,  pleasant, 
jolly  fellows  !  "  All  the  nations  have  been  topers. 
Over  a  tavern  in  old  Athens  there  was  this  Greek 
inscription  :  "  He  who  drinks  well  sleeps  well ;  he 
who  sleeps  well  has  a  pure  conscience  ;  he  who  has  a 
pure  conscience  is  dear  to  the  gods  ;  therefore,  he 
who  drinks  well  is  dear  to  the  gods."  Assuredly,  if 
the  stories  of  them  be  true,  the  gods  had  a  fellow 
feeling  here.  And  if  the  logic  was  bad,  doubtless 
the  jovial  Athenians  found  the  liquor  good,  which 
was  the  main  thing. 

135 


Faith^s    Certainties 

This  law  of  giving  up  one  thing  to  get  another  is, 
we  say,  written  all  over  Hfe.  We  empty  the  soul 
to  find  room  for  something  else.  The  man  of 
industry  forswears  idleness.  Industrialism,  as  we 
have  it  to-day — there  is  a  renunciation  if  you  Hke  ! 
Nothing  seems  to  have  been  dearer  to  primitive 
man  than  his  laziness.  And  it  survives  still  with  a 
monstrous  tenacity.  Fichte  has  an  anecdote  of  a 
sailor  who  preferred  to  take  the  risks  of  hell  to 
exerting  himself  to  self-improvement  in  this  life. 
"  There  he  would  only  have  to  suffer,  whereas  the 
other  line  of  things  would  compel  him  to  do  some- 
thing !  "  Quite  numberless  are  the  ways  in  which 
nature  pursues  us  with  her  forced  renunciations. 
A  man  marries,  and  gives  up  the  freedom  of  his 
bachelorhood.  What  the  woman  gives  up — she 
herself  best  knows.  In  our  very  pleasure-seeking 
we  are  compelled  to  renounce.  Nature  follows  here 
what  the  economists  call  "  the  law  of  diminishing 
returns."  The  first  sip  is  always  the  best.  As  we 
drink  the  quality  of  the  liquor  deteriorates.  When 
a  man  comes  into  a  fortune  his  first  sensation  is 
ecstatic.  It  does  not  taste  so  well  in  a  year,  and 
the  time  comes  when  the  experience  has  quite  ceased 
to  be  a  joy-bringer.  The  holiday  is  glorious  at  the 
beginning.  It  will  be  odd  if  the  man  is  not  bored 
before  it  is  over.  And  then,  as  life  advances,  there 
comes  a  great  stripping  process.  "  Old  age," 
said  Bishop  Warburton,  "  is  a  losing  game  " — a 
truer  thing  than  the  majority  of  that  bishop's  dicta. 
In  this  period  a  multitude  of  the  old  delights  lose 
their  zest.  The  senses  become  less  keen,  labour 
becomes  more  difficult.  One  retires  from  the  old 
employments,    the   old  glories.     The   leaves   fall   in 

136 


Renunciation 

showers  from  the  tree.  And  the  last  moment  is  a 
final  giving  up.  The  world  he  has  loved,  and  in 
which  he  has  lived,  finally  closes  its  door  on  him. 
Vixit. 

This  seems  a  mournfnl  recital.  And  it  would  be 
if  all  were  here  said.  But  it  is  only  half,  and  the  least 
significant  half.  For  now  let  us  observe  nature's 
way  of  renunciation,  with  what  glimpses  it  affords 
of  her  meaning  in  it.  Do  you  note,  to  begin  with, 
how  gently  she  does  this  work,  and  what  healing  balm 
she  applies  to  the  wounds  she  makes  ?  She  takes 
away  from  our  life,  but  always  so  as  to  leave  us 
reconciled  with  life.  And  what  she  takes  away  is 
generally  replaced  with  something  better.  We 
find,  somehow,  a  home  in  our  lot,  spite  of  its  negations. 
The  proof  of  that  is  in  the  vast  disinclination  we  find 
to  the  idea  of  changing  it  for  that  of  another.  Even 
kings  find  their  uneasy  summit  tolerable,  and,  as  a 
rule,  abdicate  only  on  compulsion.  Temperance 
knows  nothing  of  the  elect  moments  of  debauch  ;  but 
it  would  be  sorry  to  go  back  to  them.  Its  renun- 
ciation has  come  so  heavily  weighted  with  gifts, 
that  it  blesses  the  day  of  it.  Having  been  drummed 
out  of  our  idleness  into  industry,  we  find  its  forbidding 
frontier  the  opening  to  a  land  of  delights.  If  we  have 
lived  long  enough  we  shall  have  reached  Voltaire's 
view  :  "  The  further  I  advance  in  life's  career  the 
more  I  find  work  to  be  a  necessity.  It  becomes 
finally  the  greatest  of  pleasures,  and  takes  the  place 
of  all  the  illusions  one  has  lost."  We  renounce  when, 
at  the  beginning,  we  take  to  life ;  we  renounce  when, 
in  old  age,  we  give  up  so  much  of  it.  But  old 
age,  with  well-nourished  souls,  is  no  unhappiness. 
Channing  found  it  in  his  most  blessed  period ;    and 

^37 


Faith's    Certainties 

we  remember  that  fine  saying  of  Seneca,  writing  to 
his  young  friend  Lucihus :  "  My  soul  is  full  of 
vigour,  and  rejoices  in  no  longer  having  so  much  to 
do  with  the  body.  It  leaps  with  joy  and  holds  with 
me  all  sorts  of  discourses  on  old  age  ;  it  says  that 
it  is  its  flower."  As  to  the  final  renunciation  which 
death  brings,  nature  makes  it  for  us  a  very  easy 
affair  ;  so  easy  that  the  stupidest  of  us,  as  well  as 
the  wisest,  bring  it  off  with  perfect  success.  She 
takes  the  whole  business  of  it  on  her  own  hands.  It 
is  a  falling  asleep,  one  of  the  pleasantest  of  processes. 
Sir  James  Paget,  the  eminent  surgeon,  held  that  there 
was  a  certain  physical  enjoyment  in  dying. 

But  all  this,  real  and  vital  though  it  be,  is  on  the 
surface.  We  see  that  nature  compels  us  to  renounce. 
We  have  yet  to  ask,  why  that  stern  compulsion  ? 
We  have  a  right  to  ask  that,  for  nature  seems  full  of 
purpose.  She  does  nothing  indifferently.  All  her 
vast  processes,  so  far  as  we  can  discern  them,  are 
means  to  ends.  From  the  spiral  wheel  of  a  nebula  to 
the  civilisation  of  the  twentieth  century  she  has  been 
working  towards  life  ;  towards  more  life  and  fuller. 
From  the  inorganic  to  the  organic  ;  from  vegetable 
to  animal  ;  from  animal  to  man  ;  the  movement  is 
upwards.  And  in  man  the  movement  is  still  up- 
wards ;  it  is  from  the  animal  to  the  spiritual.  Man, 
in  this  world,  is  the  one  organ  of  that,  and  the  organ 
which  she  is  now  incessantly  engaged  upon,  with 
the  design  of  developing  and  perfecting  it.  Her 
problem  is,  in  a  world  of  matter,  to  create  a  world  of 
spirit.  And  man,  compounded  of  the  two,  with  a 
body  which  relates  him  to  the  one,  and  a  soul  that 
relates  him  to  the  other,  is  her  instrument  for  solving 
it.     And    here    comes    in    Goethe's    mighty    word, 

138 


Renunciation 

"  Renunciation,  once  for  all,  in  view  of  the  eternal." 
Yes,  it  is  renunciation  that  becomes  now  nature's 
working  tool.  It  is  for  this  that  she  compels  us 
upon  her  discipline ;  for  this  it  is  that  she  has 
stamped  upon  every  earthly  sensation,  every 
pleasure,  every  experience,  the  mark  of  the  transi- 
tory. By  her  relentless  time  movement  she  teaches 
us  eternity.  What  a  mark  she  has  put  on  all  fleshly 
delights  !  It  is  the  mark  of  disesteem.  How  true 
here  is  that  saying  of  Fichte  :  *'  We  may  love,  seek, 
and  desire  the  pleasures  of  sensuality,  and  may  feel 
delight  in  experiencing  them,  but  we  can  never  hold 
them  in  esteem  ;  esteem  does  not  apply  to  them  at 
all."  And  as  her  kingdom  of  the  spirit  grows — and 
it  does  grow — the  soul  becomes  ever  stronger  and 
clearer  in  its  renunciations.  We  now  cease  to 
grumble  at  nature's  discipline.  We  take  sides  with 
her,  discerning  her  high  purpose.  We  make  war 
upon  the  flesh.  We  clear  out,  one  after  another,  the 
clogging,  inferior  elements  to  make  room  in  us  for 
higher  things.  This  movement,  mark  you,  is  not 
merely  an  individual  one,  though  it  begins  there. 
It  is  a  human,  a  universal  one.  Our  modern 
materialism  is  only  a  transitory  thing.  The  whole 
world  is  upon  this  path  of  renouncement.  It  is 
steadily  giving  up  the  lower  animal  moods. 

Observe,  for  instance,  the  modern  movement 
against  war.  In  the  war  spirit  all  the  animalisms  are 
concentrated.  The  old  bloodthirstiness,  the  old  lust 
of  killing,  the  lust  of  power,  of  dominating  your 
neighbour,  the  lust  of  possession,  the  getting  things 
at  all  costs,  the  lust  of  pride  and  vainglory,  the  lust 
of  rape,  violation  and  lubricity — they  are  all  here, 
blood  relations,  the  compact  organisms  of  the  brute 

139 


Faith's   Certainties 

in  us.  Good  men  have  seen  this  in  every  age.  Says 
Erasmus :  "I  often  wonder  that  human  beings, 
especially  Christian  human  beings,  can  be  so  mad 
as  to  go  fighting  one  another."  Horace  Walpole, 
writing  of  the  wonderful  year,  1759,  when  England 
was  conquering  in  East  and  West,  says  :  "  Our  bells 
are  worn  threadbare  with  ringing  of  victories."  He 
quotes  Voltaire's  "  Universal  History,"  in  which  is  a 
chapter  with  the  title  "  The  English  Victorious  in 
the  Four  Quarters  of  the  World,"  and  says  :  '*  Yet, 
tasting  its  honours  and  elated  with  them,  I  heartily, 
seriously  wish  they  had  their  quietus.  What  is  the 
fame  of  men  compared  with  their  happiness  ?  Who 
gives  a  nation  peace  gives  tranquillity  to  all.  How 
many  must  be  wretched  before  one  can  be 
renowned  ?  "  Well,  we  have  reached  a  point  where 
this  view  is  no  longer  the  property  of  a  few  illu- 
minated minds,  but  where  it  has  entered  as  a  new 
development  of  the  universal  soul.  Humanity  is 
getting  ready  to  turn  out  of  itself,  as  something 
inferior,  the  desire  for  domination  ;  it  is  beginning 
to  see  the  absurdity  of  hate  and  the  common-sense  of 
love  ;  it  is  longing  to  cut  its  connection  with  violence 
and  thievery  as,  from  beginning  to  end,  a  bad, 
unprofitable  business.  What  is  coming  is  a  human 
renunciation,  the  finest,  the  most  portentous,  the 
world  has  yet  seen. 

So  moves  in  our  midst  the  kingdom  of  the  spirit. 
Christianity  is  proving  itself  mightier  than  Nietzsche. 
Even  its  seeming  defeats  are  victories.  The  German 
Socialists  repudiate  the  Christian  faith,  and  are  at  the 
same  time  exhibiting  its  fruits.  Their  proclamation 
of  universal  brotherhood  and  of  the  abolition  of  war 
has  more  Christianity  in  it  than  aU  the  orthodoxies. 

140 


Renunciation 

Christ  would  smile  at  these  deniers,  Christ,  who 
believed  in  hearts  and  acts  so  much  more  than  in 
dogmas.  It  is  from  Him  we  have  learned  the 
meaning  of  nature's  law.  He  is  mighty  because 
He  is  finally  her  chief  exponent.  He  taught 
renunciation,  taught  by  practising  it.  He  taught 
how  to  win  the  world  by  losing  it ;  how  to  achieve 
the  vaster  life  by  clearing  out  of  the  soul  the  rubbish 
that  choked.  At  every  point  His  way  demon- 
strates itself  as  the  only  way.  As  we  follow  it  we 
are  astonished  at  our  stupidity  in  not  seeing  all 
this  before.  His  renunciation,  as  we  practise  it, 
shows  as  a  perpetual  deliverance.  When  we  have 
renounced  hatred,  jealousy,  pride,  envy,  vicious 
pleasures,  we  find  we  are  ridding  ourselves  of  diseases, 
and  entering  on  the  true  health.  We  give  up,  and 
give  up,  but  the  soul  has  no  vacant  places.  The 
disorderly  crew  that  has  gone  is  replaced  by  "  shining 
ones."  We  discard  the  transitory  for  the  permanent. 
We  find  with  Boehme  that  "  he  for  whom  time 
is  as  eternity  and  eternity  as  time  is  freed  from  all 
struggle."  We  see,  with  Caird,  that  "  the  Christian, 
in  giving  away  everything  which  he  has  for  him- 
self as  against  another,  in  surrendering  every  exclusive 
good,  is  widening,  not  narrowing  his  life.  In  ceasing 
to  contend  for  his  rights  against  others  he  has  made 
all  their  rights  his  own."  We  see  that  life's  finest 
investment,  the  most  profitable  investment  of  our 
wealth,  our  time,  our  powers,  is  the  investing  of 
them  in  the  good,  the  happiness  of  others.  Here  are 
dividends  whose  value  alone  the  soul  can  estimate. 
Wonderful  is  the  calm,  the  interior  peace,  that 
comes  to  the  man  who  has  learned  how  to  renounce. 
It  is  this  alone  which  can  reconcile  us  to  life,  which 

141 


Faith's    Certainties 

enables    us    even    to    understand    it.      It    is    peace, 
whatever     happens.      When     one     desirable     thing 
after  another  is  taken  away,  the  instructed  soul  falls 
back    upon   its   infinite  reserve  in  God.      He  is  in 
the  business,  knows  it  all,  and  that  is  enough.     The 
sense  of  this  is  the  treasure  of  humble  souls.     George 
Eliot  voices  the  faith  of  millions  of  them — a  faith 
which  contains  the  wisdom  of  all  the  ages — when 
she  makes  Dolly  Winthrop,  the  blacksmith's  wife, 
say  to  Silas  Marner,  when  he  lost  his  little  fortune, 
"  Eh,  there's  trouble  i'  this  world,  and  there's  things 
as  we  can  never  make  out  the  rights  on.     And  all 
as  we've  got  to  do  is  to  trusten,  Mr.  Marner — to  do 
the  right  thing  as  far  as  we  know,  and  to  trusten. 
For  if  us,  as  knows  so  little,  can  see  a  bit  o'  good  and 
rights,  we  may  be  sure  there's  a  good  and  a  rights 
bigger  nor  what  we  can  know.     I  feel  it  i'  my  own 
inside  as  it  must  be  so." 

Renunciation,  once  for  all,  in  view  of  the  eternal. 
It  seems  a  good  doctrine  after  all.  Only  let  us  not 
misunderstand  it.  It  offers  no  commission  to 
idleness,  to  apathy,  to  indifference.  It  means  any- 
thing but  an  empty  world,  or  an  empty  soul.  On  the 
contrary,  it  gives  us  a  full-blooded  vigour  because  it 
gives  us  a  full-blooded  hope.  It  is  a  doctrine  of 
values,  of  what  are  the  higher  and  what  the 
lower.  The  man  who  embraces  it  must  beware  of 
one  thing.  He  must  not  seek  to  impose  his  renun- 
ciation upon  other  people.  The  beauty  of  it  is  that  it 
is  each  man's  own  secret.  You  cannot  make  your 
growth  that  of  your  neighbour.  You  cannot  impose 
it  on  your  neighbour.  Try  it,  and  you  will 
assuredly  fail.  Your  only  success  will  be  in  becom- 
ing a  nuisance.     It  is,  we  say,  each  man's  own  secret, 

142 


Renunciation 

the  secret  won  out  of  his  experience,  his  traffic  with 
life,  with  time,  with  eternity.  But  oh  !  it  is  a  great 
secret.  It  is  the  secret  of  accepting  the  universe, 
with  all  its  infinity,  its  depth  of  meaning  ;  of  the 
universe  with  its  apparatus  of  sense  in  front,  and 
with  its  spiritual  behind  ;  with  its  fleeting  moment 
and  its  timeless  underneath  ;  the  secret  which, 
when  the  world  seems  most  vacant,  makes  it  for  us 
most  filled  with  God  ;  which  opens  to  us  the  meaning 
of  the  apostolic  word  of  "  having  nothing,  and  yet 
possessing  all  things." 


M3 


XIV 

THE  CONVERSION  OF  POWER 

The  conversion  of  power,  the  changing  of  it,  that 
is,  from  one  form  into  another,  has  been  going  on  from 
the  beginning  of  the  world.  It  is  only  of  late,  how- 
ever, that  we  have  begun  to  understand  it  and  to 
see  its  possibilities.  Science  is  full  of  it,  and  thrusts 
the  thing  upon  us  at  every  turn.  You  go  into  an 
electrical  power-house,  and  listen  to  the  hum  of  those 
mighty  revolving  cylinders.  What  are  they  doing  ? 
They  are  turning  motion,  friction,  into  electricity. 
But  what  is  turning  them  ?  You  visit  the  engine- 
room,  the  boilers,  the  furnaces.  There  you  find  coal 
passing  into  heat,  which,  in  its  turn,  is  converting 
water  into  steam,  whose  pressure,  cunningly  applied, 
makes  the  cylinders  move.  And  when  you  ask 
where  the  coal  obtained  its  reserves  of  heat,  you  go 
back  across  ages,  across  millions  of  miles  of  space  to 
where  the  sun,  aeons  ago,  pouring  its  energy  upon 
the  earth,  created  on  its  surface  a  vegetable  hfe,  that 
died,  was  buried,  crushed  under  succeeding  rock 
formations,  holding  in  the  compressed  coal-form 
all  this  sun  heat,  to  be  dug  out  finally  and  to  yield 
its  hoarded  energy  under  our  steam  boiler.  And  at 
the  other  end  you  find  the  electricity,  thus  created, 
resolving  itself  once  again  into  motion,  urging  rail- 
way trains,  turning  the  wheels  of  factories,  or  passing 
into  light  and  illuminating  a  myriad  homes. 

144 


Conversion  of  Power 

The  transmutation  of  energy  !  It  is  a  new  book 
of  revelation  here  opened  to  us,  and  no  one  can  say 
what  treasures  are  yet  to  be  drawn  from  it.  Up  to 
now  science  has  been  its  most  enthusiastic  and  most 
proficient  pupil.  Every  day  it  offers  us  a  new  chapter 
of  discovery.  Out  of  pitchblende  it  has  produced 
radium  and  thorium,  the  wonder-workers.  It 
shows  us  the  world  as  just  a  storehouse  of  power,  of 
power  immense,  inexhaustible ;  powers  stored  in 
vegetation,  in  stones,  in  metals  ;  powers  so 
tremendous  that  to  liberate  them  is  to  endow  us 
with  a  thousandfold  potency.  It  has  been  said  that 
the  atomic  force  contained  in  a  centime  piece,  if  liber- 
ated, would  drive  a  railway  train  twice  round  the 
circumference  of  the  earth.  We  can  scarcely  imagine 
what  man  will  be  when  he  has  mastered  more  of  these 
secrets,  clothed  himself  with  all  these  potencies. 
But  the  scope  of  science  is  within  material  things, 
and  these,  after  all,  are  the  smallest  part  of  the  hfe 
of  man.  There  is  a  spiritual  side  of  this  conversion  of 
power,  which  as  yet  we  have  only  begun  to  con- 
sider, but  which  is  going  to  be  indeed  a  new  revelation, 
full  of  momentous  results.  It  is  on  what  we  have  to 
learn  on  this  aspect  of  the  new  knowledge  that  we 
want  here  principally  to  concentrate  attention. 

It  is  worth  noting,  in  the  first  place,  that  in  her  con- 
version of  power,  nature's  movement  is  a  consistently 
upward  one.  Our  planet's  history  begins  with  a 
chaos  of  lifeless  matter,  in  a  state  of  prodigious 
confusion.  For  countless  ages,  as  the  flaming  mass 
cools  and  hardens,  there  is  nothing  but  what,  to  us, 
would  be  a  reign  of  horror.  Gaseous  explosions 
which  hurl  their  fiery  tongues  far  into  space  ;  volcanic 
upheavals  which  rend  and  twist  the  earth  crust  into 

145 

10 


Faith's    Certainties 

weirdest  shapes  ;  incessant  roar  and  crash  as  the 
contending  forces  hurl  themselves  upon  each  other. 
But  the  long  war  comes  to  an  end.  A  solid  surface 
appears,  edged  everywhere  by  encircling,  carefully- 
balanced  seas.  Out  of  confusion,  order ;  out  of 
ghastly  ugliness,  the  beginnings  of  beauty.  Then  the 
miracle  of  organic  life.  The  plains  are  covered  with 
vegetation.  Immense  growths  cover  the  steaming 
earth,  growths  which  are  to  fill  the  world's  store- 
houses with  fuel.  From  vegetable  the  lift  is  to 
animal,  and  from  animal  finally  to  man.  Man 
begins  as  animal,  to  go  on  to  the  reasonable,  and 
finally  to  the  spiritual.  If,  with  our  present  intelli- 
gence, we  could  have  watched  those  first  processes, 
so  seemingly  interminable  in  their  endurance,  we 
should  have  been  filled  with  dread  and  despair.  It 
would  have  seemed  to  us  only  an  eternal  war  of 
malignant  powers.  But  we  should  have  been  wrong. 
The  worst  enemy  to  our  faith  then,  as  it  is  now, 
would  have  been  our  impatience,  our  shortsighted- 
ness. Could  we  have  had  a  vision  of  the  future, 
could  we  have  seen  even  what  we  have  before  us 
to-day,  the  order  that  has  been  reached,  the  beauty 
revealed,  how  different  our  conclusion  ! 

We  know  the  other  side  of  this  argument.  We  are 
told  that  the  upward  movement  of  our  planet  is  to 
be  succeeded  by  a  downward  one  ;  that  our  whole 
solar  system  may  be  annihilated  by  the  clash  of  some 
opposing  sun  ;  or,  failing  that,  that  the  sun's  heat 
will  exhaust  itself,  and  that  then  our  earth,  from  the 
ever  increasing  cold,  will  cease  to  be  habitable  and 
become  as  lifeless  as  the  moon.  Everything  that 
grows  decays  and  dies  ;  and  that  is  as  true  of  the 
world  as  of  every  blade  of  grass  that  grows  upon  it. 

146 


Conversion  of  Power 

To  all  of  which  there  is  an  easy  answer.  Supposing 
the  outward  facts  to  be  as  here  stated,  is  there  any 
reason  in  them  for  the  conclusion  ?  True,  the 
world's  previous  history  has  been  one  of  decays. 
Each  generation  of  vegetable  and  animal  life  has 
decayed.  Many  of  the  old  vegetable  types,  many  of 
the  old  animal  types,  have  disappeared.  But  those 
very  decays  have  ever  been  part  of  a  progress,  a 
progress  towards  a  larger,  fuller  life.  There  has  been 
a  steady  conversion  of  power  here,  the  advance  of 
which  has  ever  been  towards  the  development  of 
the  spiritual.  Man  is  the  supreme  organ  of  that. 
And  the  spiritual  in  him  is  curiously  above  and 
defiant  of  the  material.  The  spiritual  is  in  the 
material,  but  not  of  it,  using  it  as  an  instrument,  but 
always  with  its  own  development,  acquainted  with 
other  forces,  following  other  laws.  And  who  shall 
say  that  any  crash  or  crumbling  of  the  material 
will  be  to  that  spiritual  aught  else  but  a  new  conver- 
sion of  its  power,  the  union  of  itself  with  a  higher 
spiritual  that  is  in  the  universe  ?  That  we  have  been 
going  upward,  and  have  been  for  ages,  is  an  argument — 
the  force  of  which  nothing  that  has  yet  appeared  is 
able  to  destroy — that  the  movement  is  to  continue, 
and  in  the  same  direction. 

This  law  of  the  conversion  of  power  is  an  entirely 
hopeful  one,  and  nowhere  more  so  than  in  its  refu- 
tation of  the  materialist  and  pessimistic  theories 
which  rule  so  much  of  the  thinking  of  to-day. 
M.  Gustave  le  Bon,  in  his  "  Psychologic  du 
Socialisme " — one  of  the  most  depressing  books 
we  have  read  for  many  a  day — gives  us  his  view  of 
the  modern  reign  of  force.  We  notice  it  here,  not 
merely   for   the   scientific   eminence    of   the   author 

147 


Faith's    Certainties 

and  the  power  and  eloquence  with  which  he  presents 
his  view,  but  because  he  stands  as  the  representative 
of  so  widespread  and  influential  a  school  of  Conti- 
nental thought.  He  urges  that  in  the  modern,  as  in 
the  ancient,  world  material  and  intellectual  force  are 
the  only  things  that  count.  It  has  been  so  from 
the  beginning,  and  will  be  so  to  the  end.  Altruism, 
the  moral  sense,  religion,  are  only  dreams  ;  phrases 
with  which  men  deceive  themselves.  They  are 
not  in  nature.  Nature  has  no  moral  sense,  no 
altruism,  no  distinction  of  good  and  bad.  Her  law 
is  the  law  of  the  strongest,  of  their  survival,  and  the 
subjection  or  destruction  of  the  weak.  That  is  how 
evolution  works.  That  is  how  nations  and  indi- 
viduals always  act,  and  always  will  act.  As  con- 
firmation he  points  to  the  modern  world,  and  to 
recent  history.  No  one  has  followed  this  law  more 
ruthlessly  than  the  so-called  Christian  nations.  The 
strong  States  beat  down  the  weaker.  The  Anglo- 
Saxon  in  America  has  exterminated  the  Indian.  The 
European  is  pursuing  to-day  the  same  role  in  Africa. 
In  Europe  Germany  has  swallowed  Schleswig- 
Holstein,  has  beaten  Austria,  has  defeated  France, 
and  is  preparing  further  conquests.  The  United 
States  has  driven  Spain  from  Cuba,  from  the 
Phihppines,  and  is  waiting  to  absorb  South  America. 
England,  which  won  India  by  blood  and  fire,  has 
since  crushed  the  Boers  in  South  Africa,  and  has 
seized  Egypt.  All  the  great  nations  are  armed  to  the 
teeth  and  wait  for  their  rivals'  weak  moment  to 
attack  and  destroy.  The  only  law  is  strength,  and 
woe  to  the  weak  ! 

The    historical  facts    here  are  very  much  as    he 
states,  and  they  make  sombre  reading.     But  has  he 

148 


Conversion   of  Power 

drawn  from  them  the  right  conclusion  ?  We  know 
the  deceptiveness  of  the  half-truth,  and  M.  le  Bon 
has  kept  out  here  the  biggest  half.  Indeed,  his 
initial  statement  about  nature  is  completely  and 
entirely  wrong.  When  he  speaks  of  nature  as 
ruthless,  without  conscience,  without  care  for  justice 
and  right,  he  is  forgetting  that  man,  according  to  his 
own  showing,  is  a  product  of  nature,  her  highest  on 
this  earth.  It  is  through  him  she  is  striving  to 
express  herself.  He  is  the  chosen  interpreter  of  her 
whole  meaning.  And  this  product  of  hers  is  becom- 
ing ever  fuller  and  fuller  of  that  moral  and  spiritual 
sense  which  he  denies  to  her.  If  nature  is  without 
conscience,  how  came  conscience  into  being  ?  If 
it  is  not  in  her  scheme,  how  comes  it  there  ?  With 
this  in  mind  we  can  go  a  step  further.  Let  us  admit 
the  predominance  of  force  ;  admit  that  the  stronger 
everywhere  wins.  Let  us  admit  that,  so  far,  force 
has  too  often  been  used  ruthlessly,  and  without 
mercy.  But  what  our  author  has  completely  for- 
gotten is  the  fact  that  force,  in  nations  and 
individuals,  is  itself  becoming  converted,  raised  from 
a  lower  to  a  higher  form.  Appearing  in  man,  first  as 
physical,  then  as  mental,  and  selfishly  mental,  it  is 
visibly  on  our  earth  becoming  transmuted  into 
another  form,  a  form  in  which  love  and  service  and 
sacrifice  become  increasingly  predominant.  If 
history  shows  anything  it  shows  that.  Where  are 
now  the  ancient  barbarisms,  the  atrocities  of  Attila, 
of  Timour,  of  Genghis  Khan  ?  What  general 
would  now  act  as  Titus  did  at  the  conquest  of 
Jerusalem  ?  Where  is  the  old  slavery,  the  old  serf- 
dom ?  Where  the  old  criminal  codes  with  their 
tortures  and  wholesale  executions  ?     Conquests  are 

149 


Faith's  Certainties 

no  longer  what  they  were.  England  won  against  the 
Boers  and  granted  them  a  free  constitution.  A  new 
conscience  has  arisen  as  to  the  treatment  of  the 
weaker  races.  We  have  already  got  so  far,  and  the 
movement  is  all  in  one  direction.  Force  is  becoming 
spiritual,  and  nothing  can  resist  the  onward  march. 
And  it  is  nature  which  is  doing  that ;  only  a  higher 
nature  than  M.  le  Bon  wots  of.  It  is  a  nature  which 
includes  love  and  righteousness  and  God. 

But  this  doctrine  is  not  meant  merely  for  the 
historian  ;  it  is  not  meant  to  leave  us  as  spectators 
of  what  has  been  going  on.  It  is  a  doctrine  for 
action,  for  our  action.  The  business  of  the  Church 
to-day,  of  all  believing  men,  is  that  of  the  conversion 
of  power.  And  observe  here,  that  just  as  in  the 
natural,  so  in  the  spiritual  world,  the  ultimate 
source  of  the  power  is  beyond  and  above  ourselves. 
In  the  physical  system  we  owe  everything  to  the  sun. 
The  earth  is  just  a  receiver  of  its  Hght  and  heat, 
and  by  receiving  and  transmuting  it  has  become  what 
it  is.  All  its  power  comes  from  above.  And  we 
expect  to  get  more  and  more  out  of  the  sun  by  better 
uses  of  it.  We  hear  of  receivers  in  tropical  countries 
which  by  collecting  and  concentrating  its  rays,  are 
being  used  as  creators  of  mechanical  energy.  All 
the  forces  indeed  that  are  stored  in  the  earth  are  sun 
forces  ;  and  we  have  only  begun  to  tap  them  as  yet. 
We  are  clear  about  this  in  the  physical  realm.  We 
are  dubious  about  it  in  that  other,  and  yet  there  is 
nothing  more  sure.  Man  has  no  more  made  himself 
spiritually  than  he  has  made  himself  bodily.  His 
soul  owes  itself  ultimately  to  the  flowing  in  upon 
him  of  ethereal  powers  from  beyond,  and  the  growth 
in  him  of  a  capacity  to  receive  and  assimilate  them. 

150 


Conversion  of  Power 

And  the  problem  of  religion,  of  the  Church  to-day, 
is  the  problem  of  a  larger  receptive  area,  of  a 
better  use  of  what  it  gathers  there.  The  New 
Testament  is  here  in  a  strict  line  with  science.  "  But 
ye  shall  receive  power.""  In  the  far  future  we  may 
anticipate  that  man  will  have  so  grown  on  this  side 
that  he  will  move  mountains  where  we  cannot  shift 
molehills.  But  even  now  we  could  receive  so  much 
more  than  we  have.  To  get  these  sun  forces  we  must 
put  ourselves  in  the  way  of  them,  and  open  wide  the 
windows  to  let  them  in.  If  we  follow  the  right 
way,  they  are  as  certain  to  come  to  us  as  electricity 
comes  when  you  have  the  right  apparatus  and  the 
right  connection.  Those  old  ways  of  obedience,  of 
pureness,  of  spiritual  desire,  of  the  daily,  hourly 
uplift  of  the  soul  to  God  ;  here  always  the  sunbeams 
strike  ;  here  their  heat  may  be  felt.  Receiving  them 
we  give  over  doubting  ;  we  begin  working,  and  soon 
we  begin  reaping. 

One  of  the  results  here  is  the  steady  conversion  of 
the  lower  powers  in  us  into  something  of  a  higher 
grade.  An  immense  mistake,  fallen  into  by  religious 
people  of  all  ages,  has  been  to  suppose  that  emotion, 
carried  to  a  sufficient  height,  was  the  real  spirituahty, 
and  rendered  all  other  gifts  unnecessary.  We  find 
it  in  the  Montanism  of  the  second  century  ;  in  the 
Gospellers  of  Germany  in  Luther's  time  ;  it  has  been 
a  familiar  feature  in  the  English  and  American 
revivals.  To  be  filled  with  the  Spirit — which  with 
these  people  meant  a  certain  emotional  exaltation — 
was  everything  and  a  substitute  for  everything.  In 
comparison  with  it,  the  fruits  of  study,  of  learning,  of 
all  intellectual  achievement,  were  matters  of  no 
account  :    to  be  avoided,  indeed,  as  temptations  of 

151 


Faith's    Certainties 

the  evil  one.  If  these  people  had  had  a  little 
more  learning,  they  would  have  despised  it  less.  It 
would  have  shown  them  that  the  great  religious 
leaders,  the  Wesleys,  the  Luthers,  the  Calvins,  the 
Augustines,  the  great  Greek  Fathers,  were  always  men 
of  brains — of  brains  well  packed  and  hard  worked. 
In  order  to  convert  your  powers  you  must  have  some 
powers  to  convert  !  The  rule  we  are  under  puts  no 
premium  on  idleness,  and  is  perfectly  aware  of  the 
difference  between  stupidity  and  strength.  But  the 
point  is  here,  that  to  become  a  spiritual  force,  all 
our  inheritance  of  faculty  needs  to  be  converted.  It 
requires  a  transmutation  as  real  and  actual  as  that  of 
vegetable  into  animal,  as  that  of  coal  into  electricity. 
Of  itself  it  is  just  a  force,  which  may  be,  and  often  is, 
the  most  ruthless  in  the  world.  There  wait  upon 
it,  eager  for  alliance,  all  the  devil's  legionaries — 
pride,  selfishness,  ambition,  the  lust  of  applause, 
the  lust  of  conquest ;  and  the  Church's  hope — and 
let  us  say  the  world's  hope — lies  in  the  conversion  of 
this  power,  the  lifting  of  it  into  a  realm  where  it  will 
work  free  from  those  lower  influences,  the  trans- 
muting of  it  all  into  the  hfe  of  love,  into  the  sacrifice 
of  God  as  seen  in  the  light  of  the  Cross. 

The  light  of  the  Cross.  That  is  the  sun-ray  which 
is  to  do  for  the  soul  what  the  solar  heat  has  done  for 
the  earth.  And  it  is  not  only  heat,  but  light.  In  its 
beam  we  see  the  solution  of  the  world's  enigma, 
above  all  of  its  enigma  of  suffering.  All  the  pessim- 
isms that  have  been  bred  of  pain  disappear  when  we 
see  in  the  Cross  what  suffering  really  means.  If  it 
were  there  as  an  end,  as  a  thing  to  be  endured,  with 
nothing  to  follow,  a  huge  mass  of  distressfulness  into 
which  a  waste  world  has  blundered,  we  might  well 

152 


Conversion   of  Power 

be  pessimists.  But  in  the  Cross  we  see  it  as  never  an 
end,  but  always  a  means.  In  all  its  forms,  the 
lowest,  the  most  appalling,  it  is  a  means,  a  force  which 
turns  itself,  and  other  things,  into  a  final  good.  We 
see  it  in  ourselves,  turning  itself  into  courage,  into 
hardihood,  into  pity,  into  sympathy,  into  invention, 
into  remedies.  And  in  the  Cross  we  see  how  God 
takes  suffering,  how  He  willingly  enters  into  its  worst 
forms ;  and  shows  us,  not  only  in  the  hours  on 
Calvary,  but  in  all  the  world  history  since,  what 
triumphs  lie  hidden  there.  There  have  we  in  its 
highest  exercise  the  will  to  suffer  for  others,  and  by 
it  to  bring  them  redemption.  For  as  St.  Bernard 
has  it,  "  Non  mors  sed  voluntas  placuit  spoftte 
morientis"  (Not  the  death  but  the  will  of  Him  who 
willingly  died  is  its  essence  of  satisfaction).  And 
the  sufferer  conquers  by  enduring.  As  Augustine 
has  it,  "  Victor  quia  victima  "  (He  is  the  conqueror 
by  being  the  victim).  And  as  we  ourselves  enter 
into  that  death,  feel  in  ourselves  the  prick  of  the 
thorny  crown,  and  the  piercing  of  the  spear,  we,  too, 
find  ourselves  conquerors.  Our  powers,  too,  have 
become  converted.  We  know  ourselves  as  among 
the  spiritual  forces  of  the  world. 

In  this  new  life  we  realise  how  nature  herself  is 
holy ;  how  her  laws  have  the  Cross  for  their  centre. 
When  we  have  reached  this  stage  we  see  how  all  her 
universe  is  for  that  life  and  ministers  to  it.  Her 
native  healings  are  spiritual  healings.  In  times  of 
exhaustion,  when  overworn  by  our  task,  overworn  till 
we  feel  incapable  of  a  noble  thought  or  a  loving  deed, 
how  often  have  we,  in  such  an  hour,  yielded  ourselves 
joyfully  to  her  loving  ministrations  !  We  have 
gone  out  to  breathe  her  air,  to  inhale  her  quiet,  her 

153 


Faith's    Certainties 

sunshine,  to  find  by  and  by  how  these  voiceless 
powers,  steaUng  into  the  body  and  into  the  mind, 
there  become  transformed  into  peace  and  love  and  the 
eagerness  for  service  !  The  divine  without  us  has 
become  the  divine  within  us.  The  God  in  the 
breeze  was  the  God  in  the  thought.  And  if  God 
be  for  us,  with  us,  who  shall  be  against  us  ? 


154 


XV 
THE  EVANGELICAL  ROOT 

Protestantism,  looking  at  it  on  the  world  scale, 
seems  just  now  in  a  somewhat  bad  way.  On  the 
Continent  it  is  at  the  lowest  ebb.  In  France,  where 
it  was  once  a  power,  St.  Bartholomew  dealt  it  a  blow 
from  which  it  never  recovered,  and  the  revocation 
of  the  Edict  of  Nantes  was  a  stroke  hardly  less 
crushing.  It  drained  the  country's  veins  of  some  of 
its  most  precious  life-blood.  The  work  of  the 
Encyclopaedists  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  the 
Revolution  which  followed,  completed  the  business. 
Amongst  masses  of  the  French  people  the  very 
instinct  of  religion  seems  to  have  been  extinguished. 
Says  M.  Fouillee  :  "  The  religion  of  the  French 
peasant  is  a  disguised  paganism,  or  religious  in- 
difference." In  Germany,  the  land  of  Luther, 
Lutheranism  is  a  confessed  failure.  It  offers  the 
spectacle  of  empty  churches,  of  an  ever  decreasing 
supply  of  candidates  for  the  ministry,  of  an  appalHng 
growth  of  materialism  and  sensuality.  People  are 
tumbling  over  each  other  in  their  eagerness  to  cut 
every  visible  connection  with  the  Church.  Those 
who  remain  as  its  professed  adherents  treat  its 
ceremonies  and  obligations  with  contemptuous 
indifference.  Everywhere  on  the  Continent,  one  may 
say,  the  movement  is  backward  rather  than  forward. 
In  England,  as  compared  with  these  other  lands,  we 

155 


Faith's    Certainties 

note  one  enormous  difference.  In  the  eighteenth 
century,  so  disastrous  spiritually  to  the  Continent, 
we  had  the  vast  movement  of  the  Evangelical  Revival. 
What  that  meant  in  its  saving  power — saving,  not 
only  in  the  religious  sense,  but  socially  and  politically, 
to  the  whole  English-speaking  race— no  statistics  can 
compute,  no,  and  no  imagination  can  well  exaggerate. 
One  wonders  what  had  been  the  difference  to  Europe 
if  France  and  Germany  had  seen  their  Wesley  and 
their  Whitefield  ;  had  seen  their  masses  stirred  as 
ours  were,  by  that  mighty  Gospel  ?  But  in  England 
we  have  to  ask.  Where  does  the  movement  stand 
to-day  ?  Here,  too,  are  signs  of  decadence.  Here, 
too,  we  have  the  spectacle  of  emptying  churches,  of 
growing  indifference,  of  disheartened  workers.  The 
great  missionary  effort,  full  of  fight  at  the  front, 
finds  weakness  at  its  base  ;  a  lack  of  enthusiasm, 
a  lack  of  supplies.  It  is  time  for  us  all  to  take  stock  of 
this  position,  to  note  what  is  lacking. 

What  we  want,  above  all  things,  to  get  at  now  is 
the  secret  of  that  old  Evangelic  movement — what 
gave  it  its  conquering  power.  About  it,  as  an 
historical  fact,  there  is,  of  course,  one  thing  to  be 
recognised.  There  are  things  in  it  that  are  no  longer 
alive,  and  that  can  by  no  process  be  resuscitated. 
History  does  not  repeat  itself.  When  a  thing  is  dead, 
it  is  dead,  and  there  is  no  raising  it  from  the  grave. 
But  there  is  this  to  be  remembered  here.  We  may 
put  it  in  Carlyle's  words  :  "  The  old  never  dies  till 
this  happens,  till  all  the  soul  of  good  that  was  in  it 
gets  itself  transformed  into  the  practical  new." 
The  old  Evangelism  has,  we  say,  some  things  in  it  that 
are  dead ;  but  its  soul,  what  and  where  is  that  ?  Can 
we  catch  that,  and  transform  it  into  the  effectively 

156 


The   Evangelical   Root 

new  ?  We  have  to  recognise  that  its  views  of 
creation,  of  human  origin,  of  inspiration  and 
revelation,  of  the  universe  as  a  whole,  were  pre- 
scientific,  and  will  never  again  recover  their  hold. 
What  we  have  learned  there  is  not  to  be  unlearned. 
We  cannot  go  back  upon  ascertained  truth.  What 
the  men  of  the  past  proclaimed  on  these  points  they 
proclaimed  with  perfect  honesty.  They  had  received 
these  views  and  had  no  evidence  to  the  contrary. 
We  have  received  that  contrary  evidence,  and  the 
mind,  by  its  very  constitution,  cannot  go  against 
evidence.  Moreover,  the  larger  realm  of  knowledge 
into  which  we  have  entered  has  radically  changed  the 
form  of  some  of  the  great  Evangelic  doctrines.  We 
now  see  creation,  revelation,  atonement  and  salvation 
as  processes  rather  than  as  separate  facts,  though 
there  are  great  outstanding  facts  as  parts  of  the 
process,  as  distinct  registers  of  a  given  advance. 
But  what  most  of  us  need  now  to  see  is  that  none  of 
these  changes  touches  the  essence,  the  soul,  the  root 
of  the  Evangelic  Gospel.  The  things,  the  powers, 
by  which  our  fathers  won  back  England  to  religion, 
are  there,  intact,  arid  need  only  to  be  used  to  win 
a  new  victory.  Let  us  try  and  find  out  what  these 
things,  these  forces,  were. 

The  first  thing  we  find  there  is  an  overwhelming 
sense  of  the  reality,  the  nearness,  the  supreme 
importance  of  the  spiritual  world.  Is  it  not  a 
noteworthy  thing  that  in  Germany  to-day,  where 
Protestantism  is  retreating  all  along  the  line,  the 
one  religious  system  that  is  holding  its  own,  and 
gaining  ground,  is  the  Roman  Church  ?  Surely  it  is 
not  difficult  to  guess  the  reason  !  Romanism,  with  all 
its  monstrous  assumptions,  has  nevertheless  some- 

^57 


Faith's    Certainties 

thing  solid  to  offer.  It  has  body  and  blood  in  it. 
In  place  of  negatives,  which  never  yet  fed  a  starving 
man,  it  offers  affirmatives.  It  tells  a  man  he  has  a 
soul  which  needs  saving,  and  that  it  can  save  him. 
It  makes  the  spiritual  world  real  to  him,  as  real  as 
his  hat  or  his  hand  ;  and  tells  him  it  is  the  biggest 
thing  in  life.  And  the  poor  fellow,  feeling  he  has  a 
soul,  which  he  would  fain  keep  warmed  and  fed, 
faced  with  the  deathly  cold  of  the  State  Church, 
faced  with  the  brutal  denials  of  Social  Democracy, 
turns  shivering  to  the  only  warm  hearth  that  is 
in  sight,  to  the  cupboard  which  offers  something 
to  eat. 

The  actively  spiritual  which  Rome  offers 
Germany  to-day  was  in  essence  what  Wesley  and 
his  coadjutors  offered  the  English  proletariat  in  the 
eighteenth  century.  They  did  not  begin,  let  it  be 
observed,  with  social  reform,  though  there  was  more 
desperate  need  of  it  then  than  there  is  now.  They 
did  not  discuss  political  questions,  though  if  ever 
there  were  big  political  questions  it  was  surely  then. 
Think  of  what  was  happening  in  that  century  ! 
England  had  lost  the  United  States.  In  return  she 
had  wrested  Canada  from  the  French,  and  had 
conquered  India.  Then  had  come  the  French 
Revolution,  which  shook  every  throne  in  Europe. 
For  its  tremendous  reaction  on  England  you  need 
to  read  the  debates,  the  newspapers,  the  memoirs 
of  the  time.  Yet,  as  you  study  the  inner  life  of 
the  great  revival,  the  astonishing  thing  is  that  you 
find  so  little  reference  there  to  all  this  hurly-burly 
outside.  Read  the  journals  of  Wesley,  the  lives 
of  the  Methodist  preachers,  the  letters  and  memoirs 
of  Berridge,  of  Fletcher   of   Madeley,    of  Grimshaw 

158 


The  Evangelical   Root 

and  others  of  the  Evangelical  clergy.  These 
people  are  all  full  of  something  else  ;  they  make 
their  people  full  of  it.  It  was  not  outside  things 
but  inside  things  they  were  busy  about.  They 
were  sure  that  was  the  proper  order.  They  had 
caught  the  meaning  of  that  traditional  saying  of 
Jesus  which  Origen  reports  :  **  Pray  for  the  great 
things,  and  the  small  shall  be  added  unto  you  ;  pray 
for  the  heavenly,  and  the  earthly  shall  be  added 
unto  you."  To  get  a  man's  soul  right  with  God  ; 
to  get  society's  soul  right  with  God,  that  was 
the  way  of  getting  everything  else  right  in  this 
world.  It  looks  sensible ;  it  was  sensible.  Have 
we  in  our  day  found  any  better  order  of  procedure  ? 
Is  our  present  method  of  busying  ourselves  about 
everything  else  than  the  centre  doing  as  well,  from 
the  Christian  point  of  view,  and  from  the  material 
point  of  view,  as  did  theirs  ?  When  we,  as  they  did, 
put  first  things  first  ;  when  we  put  the  spiritual 
world  at  the  top  of  life  ;  when  we  believe,  as  they 
did,  in  the  spiritual  values  as  the  supreme  values, 
we  shall  get  other  people  to  believe  in  them — not 
till  then. 

There  is  another  thing  to  be  noted  in  that  early 
movement.  To-day  philosophy,  with  science 
following  it,  is  occupied  supremely  with  the  question 
of  personality.  We  find  personality  to  be  the  final, 
ultimate  thing  in  the  universe.  It  is  to  its  com- 
pleter expression  that  nature  incessantly  works. 
It  is  back  of  her  as  the  explanation  of  her  move- 
ment ;  it  is  front  of  her  as  her  constant  goal.  It  is 
the  key  of  history ;  all  its  great  eras  hinge  on 
personalities ;  begin  with  them,  end  with  them. 
The  early  Evangelicals  had  no  particular  philosophy 

159 


Faith^s   Certainties 

on  this  subject.  They  were  not  great  in  philosophy. 
But  their  instinct,  and  still  more  their  experience, 
had  struck  on  the  truth,  and  they  used  it  with 
glorious  results.  They  found  their  religion  in 
personality ;  in  a  supreme  Person.  In  an  age 
which  had  dissipated  doctrine  into  a  vague  and 
far  off  Deism,  a  God  remote  from  the  world,  they 
electrified  the  masses  with  the  preaching  of  Jesus 
Christ.  They  preached  Him  as  making  God  near, 
actual,  almost  visible.  They  saw  in  Him  all  that 
God  means ;  and  all  that  man  means.  It  was 
just  what  the  weary  world  had  so  long  been  search- 
ing after.  What  a  yearning  of  the  old  world  is 
expressed  in  that  word  of  Seneca :  "  We  ought 
to  choose  some  good  man,  and  always  have  him 
before  our  eyes,  that  we  may  live  as  if  he  watched 
us,  and  do  everything  as  if  he  saw."  The  Evangelical 
strength  was  that  it  had  re-found  Christ  ;  it  had 
re-found  that  rapture  of  the  early  Christians  in  the 
discovery  of  a  Life  divine,  brought  in  visible  form  to 
their  own  lives,  a  Life  divine  which  was  also  human, 
in  whose  unsearchable  riches,  accordingly,  all 
humanity  could  share.  Here  we  say  the  Evangelic 
fathers  had  struck  the  true  philosophy  and  the 
true  religion.  The  world  to-day  has  nothing  to 
compare  with  it.  These  men  did  good  business, 
for  they  brought  to  the  market  what  they  knew 
to  be  the  pearl  of  price. 

They  drew  men's  attention  to  the  highest  point 
which  had  been  reached  in  human  life,  and  bid 
them  attach  themselves  on  to  that,  realise  its  up- 
lifting, saving  power.  They  could  not  lift  themselves 
without  a  help  from  what  was  beyond  themselves. 
No  man  can  lift  himself  by  tugging  at  his  own  braces. 

i6o 


The  Evangelical  Root 

So  they  showed  the  way  up  by  pointing  to  One 
who  could  Hft  them,  because  His  own  hold  was  in 
God.  In  Him  they  were  in  contact  with  "  the 
hoUest  among  the  mighty ;  the  mightiest  among 
the  holy."  They  put  into  practical  operation  the 
truth  which  Goethe  preaches  in  "  Wilhelm  Meister," 
where,  speaking  of  a  broken  crucifix,  he  says  : 
"  I  cannot  help  recognising  in  this  crucifix  the 
fortunes  of  the  Christian  religion,  which,  often 
enough  dismembered  and  scattered  abroad,  will 
ever  in  the  end  gather  itself  together  at  the  foot 
of  the  Cross." 

Another  thing  which  distinguished  this  movement, 
and  made  for  its  success,  was  its  note  of  urgency. 
A  man's  own  salvation  was  for  him  the  chief  thing  ; 
to  be  settled  here  and  now.  In  this  matter  they 
did  not  hesitate  to  bring  in  the  motive  of  fear. 
Have  we  not  been,  in  our  day,  a  little  too  squeamish, 
more  squeamish  than  the  facts  of  life  warrant  ? 
These  men  had  a  doctrine  of  hell  which  was  crude 
enough.  William  Law,  the  High  Church  saint 
who  was  John  Wesley's  first  inspirer,  found  it  too 
crude  to  his  later  reflection,  and  came  to  Boehme's 
view,  who  regarded  heaven  and  hell  as  states 
actually  deciding  all  our  thoughts  and  actions,  not 
a  mere  future  palace  and  prison.  However  they 
phrased  it,  what  they  meant  by  hell,  by  "  the  wrath 
of  God,"  was  the  plain,  incontestable  fact  that  the 
universe  turns  a  very  ugly  face  towards  sin,  towards 
wrong  being  and  wrong  doing.  The  state  of  things 
brought  always  the  worst  consequences,  now  and 
always.  To  get  a  man  out  of  that  was  worth  some 
strong  language.  When  a  man  is  in  a  wrong  and 
dangerous   position   a   thorough   shaking   up,    even 

i6i 

u 


Faith's    Certainties 

by  wholesome  terror,  may  be  the  best  thing  for 
him.  He  will  do  things  then  that  surprise  himself. 
Tell  a  man  who  says  he  cannot  move  a  step  farther 
that  within  six  yards  of  him  lies  a  mine  of  dynamite 
that  will  explode  in  five  minutes  and  he  will  run  like 
a  deer.  Well  that  he  can!  There  is  a  moral  con- 
dition, that  of  millions  to-day,  where  nothing  but 
a  good  fright  will  rouse.  And  if  you  put  "  hell 
and  damnation  "  for  all  that  system  of  things  which 
punishes  guilt  and  the  abandonment  of  the  good, 
are  the  words  too  strong  ?  It  is  hell  and  damnation, 
and  those  early  Evangelicals  knew  it  and  said  it. 
And  the  medicine  griped  and  worked. 

But  the  main  point  of  this  urgency  was  in  the 
business  of  saving  ;  the  damning  was  part  of  the 
saving.  These  men  believed  the  worst  about  sin. 
They  believed  the  best  about  sinners.  They  were 
glorious  optimists.  They  told  the  roughs  they 
preached  to  that  heaven  was  close  at  hand  and 
they  could  enter  it  there  and  then.  God,  so  far 
from  having  a  grudge  against  them,  was  ready  not 
only  to  forgive  them  but  to  treat  them  to  His  best. 
And  numbers  took  them  at  their  word  and  found 
it  all  true.  These  Evangelicals  were  evolutionists 
without  knowing  it.  They  believed  in  the  next 
step.  They  believed  in  variation,  and  that  its  finest 
possibilities  were  in  the  human  family.  They 
believed  in  a  divine  root  in  man,  which,  given  its 
chance,  would  show  itself  and  change  and  glorify 
its  whole  nature.  And  as  soon  as  the  people  got 
hold  of  that  they  began  to  sing.  The  Methodist 
hymns  were  the  outburst  of  a  new  joy  that 
had  come  to  English  hearts.  They  sang  in  their 
meeting-houses,  in  their  workshops,  in  tis  o".. loonies. 

162 


The  Evangelical  Root 

And  when  people  are  singing  over  their  work  you 
may  leave  off  pitying  them. 

And  we  say  that  this  movement,  purely  religious, 
purely  spiritual,  was,  within  the  range  of  its  influence, 
the  best  solution  of  the  social  question  that  has 
yet  been  offered.  The  little  communities  that 
were  formed  under  this  influence  offer  us  the  secret 
of  the  true  social  life.  Here  was  the  ideal  community, 
a  band  of  men  and  women  united  by  a  spiritual 
tie,  by  a  common  interest  of  faith,  hope,  and  love — 
of  the  deepest  things  of  the  heart.  If  there  is  any 
other  way  of  creating  a  true  social  life  we  should 
be  glad  to  hear  of  it.  It  has  not  appeared  so  far. 
The  social  reformer,  who  proposes  to  put  everything 
right  by  a  redistribution  of  property,  must  be  a 
very  na'ive  sort  of  person.  So  is  the  educationist, 
who  thinks  that  the  social  problem,  the  art  of  living 
together,  will  be  solved  by  a  better  brain-drill. 
When  you  have  got  everybody  well  housed,  well 
clothed,  well  fed,  and  well  equipped  mentally,  what 
have  you  done  ?  The  biggest  scoundrels  abroad 
to-day  are  people  who  have  got  all  this.  You  may 
endow  a  man  with  all  the  powers  that  modern 
civilisation,  its  wealth,  its  culture,  can  offer,  and 
you  have  absolutely  no  guarantee  that  he  will  not 
use  them  as  weapons  with  which  to  arm  his  wicked- 
ness. Social  reform  of  this  sort  is  beginning  from 
the  wrong  end.  It  is  to  build  without  having 
prepared  your  materials.  It  is  as  if  you  should  use 
clay  before  making  it  into  bricks  ;  timber  that  has 
never  been  seasoned.  That  is  why  all  the  Socialisms 
of  yesterday  and  to-day  have  failed  and  will  fail. 
Nothing  can  be  done  with  men  communally  until 
they  have  been  effectively  dealt  with   individually. 

163 


Faith's   Certainties 

It  is  when  men's  hearts  have  been  set  to  the  right 
tune  ;  when  they  have  been  brought  into  a  right 
relation  with  hfe's  highest  and  hohest,  and  sworn 
allegiance  to  that ;  when  they  have  learned  religion's 
secret  of  faith  and  love — it  is  only  out  of  such 
materials  that  you  can  build  an  enduring,  a  happy 
world.  Napoleon  even,  when  he  came  to  rule  France, 
had  found  that  out.  Said  he  to  Roederer  :  "  How 
shall  we  get  morality  ?  There  is  only  one  way — it  is 
to  re-establish  religion." 

If  the  Church  is  to  flourish,  and  if  the  nation  is  to 
flourish — in  the  best  sense — we  shall  have  to  get  back 
to  the  old  Evangelical  root.  We  shall  have  to  get 
back  its  conquering  faith  in  God,  its  conquering  faith 
in  men  ;  get  back  its  hardihood,  its  simplicity,  its 
sense  of  urgency  in  dealing  with  souls,  its  belief  that 
men,  properly  met  with  the  spiritual  claim,  will 
yield  to  it  and  start  on  the  way  upward.  What  is 
the  use  of  sermons  that  mean  nothing,  and  that  do 
nothing  ?  When  we  think  of  some  of  them  we  call 
to  mind  the  words  Victor  Hugo  puts  into  the  mouth 
of  Satan  : 

Quand  plus  tard,  dans  I'enfer  vengeur,  nous  assommons 
Tous  ces  lourds  sermonneurs,  c'est  avec  leurs  sermons. 

It  will  not  be  as  bad  as  that,  we  hope,  but  some  of 
them  need  to  wake  up.  Surely,  by  this  time  we  have 
learned  what  the  work  of  the  Church  really  is  ?  Its 
social  work  is  spiritual  work.  Its  duty  in  the 
social  fabric  is,  above  and  beyond  all  else,  to  prepare 
the  material  to  be  built  into  it.  Not  by  pottering  at 
this  or  that  architectural  idea  ;  not  by  fancy  essays 
at  social  town  planning,  but  by  turning  the  clay  into 
bricks.  It  is  only  when  you  have  got  souls  into 
shape  that  you  can  build  them  into  the  City  of  God. 

164 


XVI 

THE  UNREACHED  PARADISE 

The  story  of  Moses  dying  in  view  of  Canaan 
without  entering  on  it,  is  not  just  a  piece  of  indi- 
vidual biography.  It  is  our  story,  the  story  of  the 
human  heart.  We  are  all  of  us  marching  forward 
towards  a  paradise  more  or  less  in  view,  a  paradise 
we  do  not  enter.  What  we  look  for  we  do  not  get. 
We  attain  the  object  of  our  desires  to  find  it  is  not 
what  we  desired.  Our  moment  of  possession — if  we 
do  possess — is  the  moment  of  our  disillusion.  A 
strange  world,  we  say,  which  offers  us  this  for  its 
result  !  It  seems  an  indictment  of  life  altogether. 
Schopenhauer  and  others  have  built  on  it  an  elaborate 
dogma  of  pessimism.  We  may  look  into  this  later 
on,  and  offer  some  reasons  for  a  different  conclusion. 
But  let  us  look  first  at  the  facts  themselves,  the 
strange,  the  singular  facts  of  the  situation.  It  is 
told  how  in  the  eleventh  century,  when  the  fervent 
hosts  of  the  Crusaders  tramped  across  Europe,  the 
wearied  children,  as  they  espied  each  new  town,  cried 
out  with  joyful  expectancy,  "  Is  not  this,  then, 
Jerusalem  ?  "  Alas  !  Jerusalem  was  still  a  long  way 
off.  Man  has  always  been  uttering  that  cry  and 
always  his  Jerusalem  lies  further  on.  Man  is  the 
eternal  seeker  ;  what  he  finds,  instead  of  satisfying, 
makes  him  ever  more  eager  in  his  quest.  His 
terminus  ad  quern,  as  soon  as  reached,  becomes    a 

165 


Faith's    Certainties 

terminus  a  quo.  Whether  in  his  business  or  his 
pleasure,  the  process  is  always  the  same.  Notice 
your  holiday  excursionist  as  he  arrives  at  his  sea- 
side watering  place.  Will  he  stay  there  when  he  has 
reached  it  ?  The  next  morning  he  is  scanning  the 
list  of  trips  that  will  take  him  away  from  it.  For 
years  your  homebound  Englishman  has  treasured  in 
his  heart  the  thought  of  Grindelwald  or  Chamonix 
as  places  to  see  before  he  dies.  He  gets  there — 
and  then  ?  Compel  him  to  sit  there  for  a  single  day 
in  front  of  his  hotel  !  Impossible.  His  end  has 
become  a  starting  point.  Ever  for  the  new, 
the  fresh  sensation  ;  the  goal  is  nothing,  the  march 
is  all. 

And  this,  which  happened  to  you  yesterday,  has 
been  the  story  of  humanity  in  all  the  conditions, 
in  all  the  ages.  The  ancients  had  a  jest  about 
Thales,  who  fell  into  a  well  while  looking  up  at  the 
stars.  Man  has  been  habitually  falling  into  wells 
while  looking  up  at  the  stars.  He  is  so  incorrigible 
a  dreamer.  His  eyesight  carries  so  much  further 
than  his  feet.  The  stars  are  there,  sure  enough, 
but  they  are  far  off.  The  well  is  close  by,  and 
so  often  he  fails  to  see  the  two  together.  Nothing, 
so  far,  has  been  more  pitiful  than  the  magnificence 
of  man's  vision  and  the  poverty  of  its  outcome. 
Think  of  the  Utopias  in  which  people  have  lived  ! 
That  golden  age  which  has  gleamed  before  the 
eye  of  the  seer,  with  seemingly  only  a  step  between  him 
audit!  We  turn  the  pages  of  Plato's  "  Republic," 
of  the  perfect  state  which  he  constructed  for  his 
fellow  citizens.  It  never  came.  Instead,  in  a  few 
generations  Greece  had  lost  its  liberties,  had  sunk 
under  the  foreign  yoke,  become  swamped  finally  in 

i66 


The  Unreached  Paradise 

the  barbarism  which  rolled  over  the  world.  Israel 
for  centuries  dreams  of  its  kingdom,  was  never  more 
sure  of  it  than  at  the  hour  when  Rome  stepped  in, 
trod  down  the  sacred  city  and  wiped  out  the  nation. 
The  early  Christians  had  their  vision  of  the  Messianic 
appearances  ;  we  know  what  came  of  that.  All 
through  the  middle  ages  man,  the  dreamer,  was 
gloriously  busy.  The  darker  the  actual  the  more 
splendid  the  ideal.  Some,  like  Bernard,  put  it  in  the 
after  life,  in  the  celestial  city,  gleaming  beyond  the 
river  of  death.  Others,  more  daring,  predicted  a 
speedy,  miraculous  upturn  of  existing  conditions. 
In  "  The  Eternal  Gospel,"  a  work  of  the  thirteenth 
century,  supposed  to  have  been  written  by  Joachim 
di  Flor,  we  have  a  revolutionary  religious  programme 
full  of  a  profound  discontent  and  of  an  enormous  hope. 
The  Greek  Church  is  declared  to  be  Sodom  and  the 
Latin  Church  Gomorrah.  In  1260  is  to  commence 
the  reign  of  the  Eternal  Spirit,  who  is  to  redress  all 
wrongs  and  bring  in  the  perfected  state.  The  weary 
ages  as  they  rolled  saw  always  their  Jerusalem  in 
front.  The  Reformation  time  was  full  of  prophets 
of  the  new  age.  Germany  has  its  Miinzers,  its 
Miillers,  its  Carlstadts,  its  Metzlers,  who,  starting 
from  Luther's  programme,  proclaim  the  age  of 
universal  emancipation.  It  all  ends  in  the  peasants' 
war,  in  which  the  movement  is  trampled  out  in  blood 
and  fire.  In  England  More  writes  his  glorious 
Utopia,  and  goes  himself  soon  after  to  the  block. 
What  dreams  those  Fifth  Monarchy  men  had  in 
Cromwell's  time  !  And  Cromwell,  too,  what  dreams 
he  had !  He  himself  reaches  the  top,  seems  in  a 
condition  to  realise  them.  The  result  ?  Let  us 
hear  him.     "  Would  to  God  that  I  had  remained  by 

167 


Fa ith's    Certainties 

my  woodside  to  tend  a  flock  of  sheep  rather  than  to 
have  been  thrust  on  such  a  government  as  this  !  " 

Think  of  the  French  Revolution — the  dream  of  it 
and  the  reahty  !  Never  such  an  event  before  or 
since  in  human  history.  The  mass  of  us  outsiders 
have  never  begun  to  understand  it.  We  have  read 
our  Carlyle,  our  Burke,  perhaps  ;  have  a  sense  of 
tremendous  happenings,  of  Bastille  stormings,  of  the 
reign  of  terror,  of  wholesale  drownings,  wholesale 
guillotinings.  We  think  of  the  leaders,  of  Saint 
Just,  Danton,  Robespierre  as  monsters,  drunk  with 
blood.  To  get  to  know  the  thing  itself  you  must  go 
behind  all  that  to  the  men  themselves.  Read  their 
speeches,  their  writings,  their  personal  memoirs. 
These  men  are  all  idealists  !  They  thirst  for  per- 
fection and  fancy  they  see  it  coming.  Surely  there 
was  never,  since  man  began  to  be,  so  weird  a  contrast 
between  the  vision  and  the  fact.  Condorcet  was 
writing  his  glowing  chapters  on  human  perfectibility 
when  he  was  arrested  for  the  guillotine — the  guillo- 
tine which  he  escaped  by  poison.  Robespierre 
began  as  the  most  ardent  of  humanitarians,  with  a 
horror  of  bloodshed.  The  blood  that  he  and  the 
others  waded  in  afterwards  was  the  Jordan  they  were 
crossing  on  the  way  to  humanity's  promised  land. 
Amid  all  the  orgies  of  the  Terror  what  ideas  are 
being  given  to  the  nation,  what  hopes  kindled  in  it  ! 
We  read  this,  in  one  of  the  decrees  on  public  in- 
struction, passed  by  the  Convention  in  the  terrible 
'93  :  "  Finally,  free  from  the  old  prejudices,  and 
worthy  to  represent  the  French  nation,  you  will  be 
able  to  found  on  the  debris  of  dethroned  superstitions 
the  one  universal  religion,  the  religion  which  brings 
peace  and  not  war,  which  makes  free  citizens,  no 

168 


The   Unreached  Paradise 

longer  kings  or  subjects  ;  a  religion  of  brothers,  no 
longer  of  enemies ;  which  has  neither  sects  nor 
mysteries,  whose  sole  dogma  is  equality,  whose 
oracles  are  the  law,  whose  pontiffs  are  the  magis- 
trates, and  whose  altar  is  our  country."  An  orator 
of  the  Convention,  Thuriot,  in  view  of  the  approach- 
ing *'  Festival  of  Reason  "  to  be  celebrated  in  Notre 
Dame,  urged  that  a  memorial  stone  should  be 
engraved  "  which  should  commemorate  the  glorious 
hour,  and  announce  to  posterity  that  it  ^yas  on  this 
day  the  last  chain  was  broken  which  had  held  the 
human  reason  captive."  These  men  were  going  to 
do  away  with  war,  they  were  going  to  do  away  with 
popes  and  priests.  And  in  a  few  years  Napoleon  had 
signed  the  Concordat  with  Rome — Napoleon,  who 
had  turned  the  revolution  into  his  own  terrific  engine 
of  war  ! 

The  astonishing  thing  is  that,  with  all  this 
experience  behind  him,  man  is  still  full  of  his  Utopias, 
and  some  of  them  so  primitive,  so  naive.  Bebel  is 
just  dead,  a  prophet  without  a  religion.  This  Moses 
of  the  German  proletariat  had  for  his  unreached 
Canaan  a  Socialism  which  should  inaugurate  the 
human  felicity  by  such  a  distribution  of  the  world's 
goods  as  should  secure  to  everyone  his  share,  his 
mouthful.  It  is  wonderful  that  so  able,  so  sincere  a 
man  should  be  content  with  so  limited  an  outlook. 
Did  he  never  turn  his  eyes  to  the  people  who  have 
this  share,  and  so  much  more,  to  ask  whether  it  had 
contented  them  ?  We  think  here  of  Mill's  melan- 
choly when  he  put  to  himself  the  question  :  ''  What 
if  all  that  the  people  are  contending  for  be  finally 
secured  to  them,  will  that  make  them  happy,  will  it 
make  me  happy  ?  "     He  could  answer  it  only  in  one 

169 


Faith's    Certainties 

way.  Will  a  community  of  goods  make  men  free, 
will  it  make  them  good,  will  it  soften  the  anguish  of 
bereavement,  will  it  resolve  the  mystery  of  life,  will 
it  make  death  any  easier  ?  It  seems  as  if  man  will 
have  to  be  led  through  all  the  byways,  and  into  all  the 
quagmires,  in  order  to  learn — by  that  disillusioning 
experience  which  seems  the  only  way  of  reaching 
his  stupidity — where  happiness,  where  life's  real 
things  do  lie,  and  where  they  do  not  lie. 

And  as  with  the  world  at  large,  so  with  ourselves. 
We  are  all  cherishers  of  our  private  Utopias,  all 
hunters  after  a  paradise  we  do  not  reach.  Mme.  de 
Chantal  is  speaking  for  us  all  in  her  saying  :  "  There 
is  something  in  me  that  has  never  been  satisfied." 
A  prosperous  manufacturer  was  once  describing  to 
me  the  progress  of  his  fortunes.  "  I  began  with 
nothing.  I  thought  how  happy  I  should  be  if  I  ever 
reached  five  thousand.  I  got  it,  and  then  put  the 
figure  at  ten  thousand.  I  have  made  that,  and  more, 
but  do  you  think  I  am  content  ?  "  And  he  shook 
his  head.  You  meet  men  who  look  forward  to 
retiring  from  business  as  the  crown  and  reward  of 
their  career.  They  retire,  and  find  what  an  empti- 
ness that  is.  Happy  if  they  discover  some  work — 
be  it  the  cultivation  of  cabbages — some  new  interest, 
however  humble,  that  gives  their  body  and  soul  a 
chance  of  survival. 

All  this  seems — at  first  sight  at  least — an 
astonishing,  a  confounding  state  of  things.  Why 
this  eternal  disillusion,  this  perpetual  disappointment, 
this  endless  round  of  experiences,  all  with  "  vanity  of 
vanities  "  as  their  summing  up?  Is  there  any  sense 
or  reason  in  it,  anything  but  a  mockery  of  human 
hopes,   a  denial  of    human    happiness  ?     Searching 

170 


The   Unreached   Paradise 

questions,  which  remind  us  it  is  time  now  to  look 
into  the  matter  a  Httle  deeper.  And  the  first 
glance  must  be  a  psychological  one,  a  look  into  our 
make-up  as  personalities.  It  is  a  very  simple 
reflection,  and  yet  one  which  covers  so  much  of  the 
ground,  that  we  are  for  ever  unsatisfied,  because 
that  is  part  of  our  constitution.  We  are  made  to  be 
that.  Our  make-up  contains  desire  as  one  of  its 
elements,  and  the  one  business  of  desiring  is  to  be 
desiring.  That  is  what  it  is  there  for,  and  it  carries 
on  its  function  just  as  the  heart  or  the  lungs  carry  on 
theirs.  And  the  desire  feeds  on  the  unrealised,  just 
as  the  lungs  feed  on  air.  Give  it  everything,  and  it 
will  at  once — for  that  is  how  it  is  made — ask  for 
something  outside  everything.  What  is,  is  not  its 
affair  ;  that  lies  always  in  the  thing  that  is  not,  that 
is  yet  to  be.  You  can  conceive  of  personalities 
without  this  element,  but  we  are  not  in  that  cate- 
gory. We  might  be  at  some  future  time,  but  we  are 
not  that  now.  And  so  we  have  the  paradox,  that  our 
very  happiness  requires,  as  part  of  its  completeness, 
the  desire  to  be  happier  still ;  our  good  has  ever  in 
it  a  craving  for  higher  good.  We  are  not  a  static 
but  a  dynamic  ;  we  are  not  a  resting-place,  but 
always  a  bridge,  a  transition  to  something  more. 
Some  day,  in  some  other  sphere,  we  may  find  an  end, 
but  for  the  present  we  are  not  the  end  but  the 
journey.     Our  good  is  not  in  finding,  but  in  seeking. 

Note  another  thing  here.  Are  we  to  commiserate 
the  optimists,  the  prophets  of  the  race,  because  they 
dreamed  dreams  that  were  not  realised  ?  But  they 
were  happy  in  their  dreams.  Those  splendid  visions, 
would  they  have  been  without  them  ?  Would 
Thales  have  missed  his  view  of  the  stars,  even  at  the 

171 


Faith's    Certainties 

price  of  tumbling  into  the  well  ?  Is  it  a  calamity 
to  think  of  something  better  than  we  find  ?  Is  it 
not,  on  the  contrary,  our  joy,  our  inspiration,  the 
spur  to  our  best  energies  ?  We  tug  cheerily  at  our 
tasks,  yes,  amid  seeming  hopeless  conditions,  glad 
in  our  turn  to  be  numbered  with  those 

Who,  rowing  hard  against  the  stream. 
Saw  distant  gates  of  Eden  gleam. 
And  did  not  dream  it  was  a  dream. 

And  note  this  further.  We  do  not  enter  our 
paradise  because,  as  we  advance,  it  becomes,  by  this 
splendid  law  of  our  being,  always  a  better,  a  higher 
than  the  one  we  set  out  to  secure.  We  remain  un- 
satisfied with  the  earlier  consummation  because  we 
find  that  the  universe  contains  still  better  things. 
We  reach  our  Jerusalem,  as  some  of  the  Crusaders 
did,  and  find  it  not  good  enough.  That  dusty, 
evil-smelling  city  on  its  stony  height,  will  this  do  ? 
No  ;  and  were  it  a  city  of  golden  streets,  of  marble 
palaces,  still  it  would  not  do.  The  soul  leaps  at 
once  from  the  material  to  the  immaterial,  to  a 
Jerusalem  which  is  from  above,  which  descends  to 
us  out  of  heaven  from  God.  It  is  from  the 
infinite  expansibility  of  the  human  soul,  its  capacity 
for  the  highest  there  is,  that  springs  its  present 
non-content.  And  no  promise  of  good  that  could 
have  been  written  for  us  on  the  heavens  were  surely 
comparable,  both  for  its  largeness  and  its  sureness, 
to  the  sublime  hope  that  our  non-content  kindles 
within  us. 

Meanwhile,  as  we  are  thus  drawn  onward,  drawn 
by  the  immense  demand  of  the  soul,  let  us  not 
despise  or  undervalue  the  paradise  we  have  already 

172 


The   Unreached   Paradise 

reached.  Let  us  be  happy  in  the  happiness  we 
have — the  happiness  that  has  this  desire  in  it.  Let 
us  enjoy  our  incompleteness,  and  that  because  it  is 
incomplete.  Do  not  trouble  about  the  sordidness  of 
your  conditions  if  the  soul  is  not  sordid.  It  is  said 
of  Heraclitus  that  strangers  coming  to  visit  him 
expected  to  find  him  in  most  imposing  surroundings. 
Instead  he  was  engaged  in  preparing  his  food  with 
his  own  hands.  To  them  in  their  amazement  at 
seeing  him  in  so  menial  an  occupation,  he  remarked  : 
"  Here,  too,  gods  are  to  be  found  !  "  Noble 
souls  ennoble  their  surroundings,  make  them  into 
their  paradise.  Said  Perpetua,  the  North  African 
martyr,  describing  the  prison  into  which  she  was 
thrown,  to  be  delivered  afterwards  to  the  lions, 
"  The  gaol  became  to  me  suddenly  a  palace,  so  that 
I  liked  better  to  be  there  than  anywhere  else." 

Perpetua' s  palace  was  her  own  soul.  And  for 
ourselves,  whether  our  present  dwelling-place  be  a 
prison,  a  hovel,  or  a  mansion,  our  real  habitation  is 
always  that  inner  one  ;  and  whether  it  be  noble  or 
sordid  is  always  an  affair  of  its  spiritual  quality. 
Why  trouble  about  our  bricks  and  mortar  ?  Our 
habitation,  whatever  its  size,  is  an  inn,  not  an 
abiding  place.  The  great  thing  is  that  we  are  on  a 
journey,  the  most  wonderful  journey  that  ever  was. 
What  is  behind  us  is  astonishing  enough,  but  that  is 
only  a  preparation  for  what  is  before  us.  "  Here  we 
have  no  continuing  city,  but  we  seek  one  to  come." 
For  ever  do  we  seek  and  seek ;  for  ever  does  our 
paradise  recede  as  we  advance.  And  for  the  reason 
that  we  are  the  children  of  the  infinite,  and  nothing 
less  than  the  infinite,  in  its  height  and  depth  and 
fulness,  can  be  our  home. 

173 


XVII 

THE  BURDEN 

BuNYAN  makes  his  pilgrim  start  out  on  his  journey 
with  a  heavy  burden  on  his  back.  What  the  burden 
consisted  of  was  a  something  vastly  more  real  to  the 
Bedford  dreamer  than  to  the  mass  of  people  to-day. 
Yet  the  picture,  if  we  say  nothing  of  its  religious 
aspect,  is  true  for  us  all.  Let  our  theology  be 
what  it  may,  or  be  non-existent,  we  are  each  on  a 
pilgrim  way,  and  each  with  a  burden  on  his  back. 
If  we  had  a  better  eyesight  than  this  poor  physical 
one  ;  if  we  could  see  the  actual  inward  life  of  our 
neighbour,  this  burden  of  his  would  perhaps  be 
the  first  thing  to  catch  our  view.  It  would  be  the 
strangest  and  most  incongruous  compound ;  but  what 
would  most  strike  us,  in  many,  at  least,  of  our  fellows, 
would  be  its  size  and  its  weight.  The  coal-heaver, 
staggering  under  his  loaded  sack,  is  carrying  a 
feather-weight  compared  with  that  which  presses 
on  many  a  slender  enough  looking  passer-by.  We 
have  no  weighing-machine  that  can  give  us  these 
pressures.  If  there  were,  what  a  tonnage  it  would 
reveal  !  We  get  glimpses  at  times  at  what  is  going 
on.  A  look,  a  gesture,  reveals  it.  You  watch  a 
merry  party  at  its  break-up.  There  has  been  an 
hour  of  hearty  fellowship — at  a  dinner-table,  round 
a  club-room  fire  ;  for  that  brief  hour  everything  else 
has  been  forgotten  in  the  flow  of  a  common,  joyous 

174 


The    Burden 

life.  But  watch  one  of  those  faces  as  they  separate. 
A  new  look  comes.  The  lines  have  become  rigid,  the 
smile  has  vanished.  The  man  has  remembered  his 
load  ;  he  has  once  more  shouldered  his  burden. 

Unhappy  is  he  with  it  ?  Not  at  all  necessarily. 
It  is  more  than  likely  he  would  be  less  happy  without 
it.  The  change  in  him  means  that  he  has  felt  the 
tug,  and  is  caUing  on  his  strength  to  meet  it.  It 
would  be  absurd  to  exclaim  against  burdens  in  them- 
selves. You  are  built  to  carry  them,  just  as  ships 
are.  And  if  you  have  ever  been  in  a  cargo-boat  in 
ballast,  with  a  high  sea  running,  you  will  have  realised 
amid  all  that  rolHng  and  tossing,  the  value  of  being 
weighted,  if  only  as  a  condition  of  steadiness.  That 
nature  intended  us  to  be  weight-carriers,  and  to  find 
our  strength  there,  is  evident  from  her  whole  scheme. 
She  puts  it  on  us  a  Httle  at  a  time,  but  with  a  steady 
increase,  until  finally  we  are  astonished  at  what  we 
are  carrying  ;  astonished  often,  too,  at  the  ease 
with  which  we  are  managing  it.  A  man,  arrived  at 
his  strength,  burns  to  exercise  it.  It  is  not  enough 
to  fend  for  himself  alone.  He  must  marry,  take  on 
a  household,  a  family  ;  feed,  clothe  and  house  half  a 
dozen  others  than  himself.  His  business,  whether 
big  or  Httle — sometimes  because  it  is  too  big  and 
sometimes  because  it  is  too  httle — is  a  constant 
pressure.  And  to-day  people  of  sensitive  minds 
are  feeling,  as  never  before,  the  weight  of  the  world's 
burden.  We  are  getting  to  know  all  that  the  world  is 
suffering,  and  we  suffer  with  it.  We  are  at  the  pit 
mouth,  with  the  entombed  miners  ;  at  sea,  watching 
the  burning  ship,  the  agony  cooped  up  in  it ;  in  the 
crash  of  the  railway  accident ;  amid  the  starving 
women  and  children  of  the  latest  strike.     We  are 


Faith^s    Certainties 

paying  the  price  of  the  world's  new,  intimate  know- 
ledge of  itself,  and  it  is  a  heavy  one.  It  is  good  for  us 
and  the  world  we  should  carry  it,  but  it  is  distinctly 
a  drain  upon  our  strength.  Every  age  and  position  of 
life  carries  its  load,  from  which  there  is  no  escape. 
Childhood  has  its  own,  often  a  strangely  piteous  one  ; 
middle  age  is  an  incessant  tugging  and  panting  ;  and 
the  last  years  need  a  new  apprenticeship  to  their 
difficulties. 

What  are  we  doing  with  our  burdens  ?  How  are 
we  taking  them  ?  It  is  one  of  the  fundamental 
questions  in  the  answer  to  which  lies  so  much  of  life's 
secret.  There  needs  here  a  great  discrimination. 
There  are  burdens  we  have  no  business  with  at  all ; 
there  are  burdens  we  ought  to  carry,  and  do  not  ; 
there  are  burdens  to  carry  in  order  to  get  rid  of 
them  ;  there  are  so  many  burdens  we  are  carrying  the 
wrong  way.  It  may  be  well  to  sort  out  some  of  these 
categories  and  see  what  they  contain. 

There  are  loads,  and  some  of  these  of  the  heaviest, 
which  people  have  no  business  with.  In  the  days  of 
the  first  rush  to  the  Klondyke,  when  men  had  to 
face  the  terrors  of  the  Chilcoot  Pass,  and  of  the  rush- 
ing waters  of  the  great  canyon,  many  of  the  "  tender- 
foot" pioneers  started  with  vast  loads  of  superfluous 
baggage.  The  way  up  that  terrific  ascent  was  soon 
after  strewn  with  heaps  of  these  superfluities,  cast 
aside  in  the  toil  of  the  climb.  It  is  a  picture  of  the 
way  people  load  themselves  for  the  longer  journey 
of  life.  As  if  the  actual  burden  imposed  by  nature 
were  not  enough,  they  construct  a  monstrous  pile 
of  self-created  additions.  They  lend  their  imagin- 
ation to  the  service  of  fear,  and  the  two  give  them 
enough    to    carry.     They    fear    the    coming    event, 

176 


The    Burden 

twisting  it  into  shapes  of  terror  which  do  not  belong 
to  it ;  blow  it  up  into  twice  its  size,  and  then  cower 
shuddering  under  the  phantom  they  have  created. 
The  greatest  part  of  what  they  fear  does  not  happen 
at  all,  and  the  thing  that  does  happen  is  quite 
different  from  what  they  imagined.  The  blow  falls, 
but  the  anguish  you  expected  with  it,  where  is  that  ? 
The  crash,  the  loss,  the  bouleversement  of  conditions, 
is  there,  sure  enough  ;  and  often  enough,  you  are 
laughing  instead  of  crying  at  it.  Life,  after  all,  is  an 
affair  of  feeling,  and  is  it  not  true  that  some  of  our 
finest  feehngs — the  confidence,  the  exhilaration,  the 
up-leap  of  triumphant  faith — have  come  just  when 
the  outside  seemed  darkest,  when  the  thing  we  had 
dreaded  has  actually  arrived  ?  The  astonishing, 
the  really  unpardonable  thing  is  that,  after  so  many 
of  these  experiences  and  what  they  have  shown  us, 
we  should  ever  dread  another. 

That  is  not  the  only  useless  burden.  With  numbers 
of  people  half  their  load  will  have  fallen  away  when 
they  have  realised  for  themselves  the  supreme  folly 
of  pride,  and  of  that  slavery  to  convention  which  is 
born  of  pride.  Take  a  present-day  instance.  The 
existing  domestic  difficulty,  which  is  the  despair  of 
the  modern  household,  will  have  disappeared  when 
the  middle  classes  have  learned  this  lesson.  The  new 
insurgence  of  the  servant  class  is  surely  a  providential 
arrangement  to  teach  us  simplicity  !  "  You  have 
twenty  servants,"  said  Dr.  Parker  once  in  one  of  his 
Thursday  addresses ;  "  then  you  have  nineteen 
plagues  !  "  He  might  have  made  it  a  score  and 
have  been  nearer  the  truth.  When  well-to-do 
people  have  learned  to  do  for  themselves  the  things 
they  have  left  to  others,  and  to  take  a  pride  in  doing 

177 

12 


Faith  s    Certainties 

them,  they  will  have  found  how  much  better  it  is  to 
deal  with  things  themselves,  those  things  of  the 
household — things  which  never  talk  back,  which 
are  always  good-humoured,  which  always  yield  their 
return  for  honest  labour — than  to  deal  with  stubborn 
wills,  with  laziness,  incompetence,  and  the  deter- 
mination to  get  the  most  for  doing  the  least.  What 
is  the  matter,  for  your  cultured  woman — or  your 
cultured  man,  for  that  matter — with  handling  a  broom 
or  with  kindling  a  fire  ?  You  are  at  least  in  contact 
with  realities.  Here  is  a  gymnastic  as  good  as  any 
other.  Old  Heraclitus,  cooking  his  own  dinner,  said  to 
some  visitors,  astonished  at  his  occupation,  "  Here  also 
there  are  gods  !  "  Louis  Philippe  once  asked  what 
was  the  prime  accomplishment  needed  in  a  king  of 
France,  replied,  "  That  he  should  be  able  to  black 
his  own  boots."  It  was  a  skit  on  the  uncertainties 
of  the  position,  but  it  is  not  a  bad  accomplishment 
for  others  than  kings.  We  read  of  old  Wilhelm  of 
Prussia,  the  father  of  Frederick  the  Great,  that  in 
his  constant  journeys  through  the  kingdom  "  he 
liked  to  sleep  in  a  clean  barn,  and  dine  under  a  tree." 
He  started  each  day's  journey  at  three  in  the 
morning.  Let  a  man,  indoors  or  out,  try  simplicity, 
and  we  will  wager  he  will  get  more  out  of  it,  in  the 
sheer  enjoyment  of  life,  in  mental  stimulus,  in  a 
sense  of  glorious  freedom,  than  out  of  all  the  luxuries 
and  subserviences  that  pride  and  a  corrupt  taste 
have  ever  invented.  Let  those  who  think  other- 
wise go  their  way  ;  only  do  not  lose  your  self-respect 
and  your  joy  of  liberty  by  being  imprisoned  in  their 
foolish  ways  and  thinkings. 

There    are    millionaires    who    complain    of    their 
wealth  as  a  burden,  though  none  of  them  seem  over- 

178 


The    Burden 

anxious  to  get  rid  of  it.  Assuredly,  it  will  be  a 
burden  to  a  right-minded  man  ;  a  good  burden  or  a 
bad  one,  yet  a  burden.  There  are  distinct  depri- 
vations in  it.  It  removes  him  from  so  much  of  the 
simpler  realities  out  of  which  life's  finest  emotions  are 
extracted.  And  Cicero's  word  on  accumulation  for 
its  own  sake  has  surely  sense  in  it  :  "  Can  anything 
be  more  absurd  than  in  proportion  as  less  of  our 
journey  remains  to  seek  a  greater  supply  of  pro- 
visions ?  "  Sense,  too,  in  Seneca's  word  :  "  Non 
qui  farum  habet,  sed  qui  plus  cupit,  pauper  est " 
(Not  he  who  has  little,  but  he  who  covets  more,  is  the 
poor  man).  In  the  present  state  of  the  world  ;  of 
its  poverty-stricken  masses,  to  live  at  one's  ease  in 
Capuan  luxury,  argues  a  habit  of  mind  only  one 
remove  from  that  of  the  mediaeval  baron  who  found 
an  added  zest  in  his  barbarian  banquets  from  the 
thought  of  the  wretches  groaning  in  his  dungeons 
underground.  But  it  is  another  story  when  we  hear 
of  men  using  their  wealth  as  a  trust,  carrying  it  as  a 
burden  for  others.  There  is  a  possibility,  as  Mr. 
Gerald  Lee  has  taught  us,  of  "  inspired  millionaires," 
men  who  have  a  genius  not  only  for  getting  wealth, 
but  also  for  using  it  the  right  way.  Is  it  not  better 
in  their  hands  than  in  those  of  blockheads  ?  And 
so  many  of  us  are  blockheads.  The  mass  of  men  are 
quite  incapable  of  improving  their  condition.  Their 
need  is  to  have  at  their  head  leaders  who  have  the 
genius  and  the  power  to  think  out  and  to  solve  the 
problem  of  these  ungifted  ones.  Wealth  in  the 
hands  of  brains  and  of  love  is  the  happiest  con- 
junction. The  man  who  by  honest  and  legitimate 
methods  creates  a  great  industry,  giving  thereby 
healthful    employment    to    hundreds    of    workers, 

179 


Faith's    Certainties 

creating  for  them  happy  homes,  caring  for  them  as 
father  of  a  vast  household,  is  assuredly  one  of  the 
noblest  of  our  burden  bearers.  It  is  one  of  the 
happiest  of  auguries  that  their  number  is  increasing. 
It  will  be  by  a  combination  of  the  world's  best 
brains,  its  accumulated  capital,  and  the  spirit  of 
service  that  we  shall  get  rid  of  one  of  the  world's 
cruellest  and  most  shameful  burdens — that  of  the 
poverty  of  the  poor.  While  multitudes  of  us  are  on 
firm  ground,  high  up,  with  nature's  beauties  all 
around  us,  and  a  clear  sky  above  us,  another  multi- 
tude is  down  in  the  pit,  shut  out  from  all  that,  their 
feet  sinking  in  the  mire,  involved  in  a  desperate 
struggle  to  prevent  being  engulfed  by  it.  Have  we 
any  idea  what  this  poverty  is  ?  We  turn  to  the 
United  States,  the  land  of  boundless  wealth,  of 
enormous  possibilities.  In  this  Eldorado  Mr.  Robert 
Hunter,  an  American  statistician,  tells  us  that  there 
are  four  million  persons  dependent  on  public  relief; 
that  an  equal  number  are  destitute  but  bear  their 
misery  in  silence  ;  and  that  ten  millions  have  an 
income  insufficient  to  maintain  them  in  physical 
efficiency.  We  are  told  that  in  Boston,  in  1903,  over 
136,000  people,  or  20  per  cent,  of  the  population,  were 
aided  by  the  public  authorities.  One  in  every  ten  who 
die  in  New  York  is  buried  a  pauper.  That  is  wealthy 
America.  In  England  the  investigations  of  Mr. 
Booth  and  Mr.  Rowntree  have  shown  us  the  condition 
of  things.  And  yet  in  England,  to  say  nothing  of 
the  States,  a  modern  economist  assures  us  that  with 
the  science  we  now  command,  we  can  produce  far 
more  food,  houses,  clothing,  furniture  and  other 
commodities  than  we  actually  need,  and  this  while 
affording   ample  leisure  for  the  workers.     What  is 

180 


The    Burden 

lacking  ?  Brains  and  a  good  will.  When  we  have 
ceased  to  be  internationally  mad,  we  shall  give  over 
spending  over  half  our  national  revenue  in  destruc- 
tion and  the  preparation  for  it.  The  sum  saved 
would  provide  all  the  needed  capital.  But  capital 
is  of  no  use  ;  is  a  mere  mischief  unless  we  have 
intellect  and  the  right  will  behind  it.  To  put  the 
power  and  the  wealth  indiscriminately  into  the  hands 
of  the  mob — the  dream  of  the  modern  Socialist — 
would  be  the  biggest  insanity  of  all.  It  would  be  a 
useful  experiment  to  try  it  on  a  ship,  with  a  com- 
mittee of  the  crew  and  of  the  stokehole  as  navi- 
gators !  The  world,  fortunately  for  itself  here,  has 
had  some  similar  experiments,  and  we  know  their 
results.  During  the  French  Revolution  there  were 
established  State  workshops,  which,  in  Paris, 
occupied  31,000  workmen.  A  State  control  of 
industry  !  The  men,  under  this  regime,  arrived,  we 
are  told,  at  ten  o'clock,  and  left  at  three.  They  spent 
their  time  in  drinking  and  card  playing.  Quite 
recently,  a  few  years  ago,  France  furnished  another 
experiment.  Roubaix,  one  of  its  great  manu- 
facturing centres,  was  captured  by  the  Socialists. 
The  municipal  authorities  were  composed  largely 
of  saloon  keepers  and  newsvendors.  They  began  by 
creating  remunerative  places  for  all  their  relatives. 
After  a  very  brief  period  of  power  the  electors  of 
Roubaix  realised  that  it  required  other  qualifications 
than  these  to  administer  a  great  city,  and  there  was 
an  end  of  the  Socialist  municipality.  It  ended,  as 
all  such  experiments  must  end,  because  they  are 
against  human  nature  and  the  laws  of  life.  Human 
affairs  can  never  succeed  unless  there  is  power  and 
capacity  at  the  head  and  obedience    behind.     To 

181 


Faith's    Certainties 

get  through  the  desert  and  into  Canaan,  seek  first 

your  Moses  and  your  Joshua. 

The  burden — the  world's  burden  and  our   own — 

is,  we  see,  a  strangely  assorted  compound.     A  vast 

deal  of  it  is  to  be  got  rid  of,  and  we  can  get  rid  of  it. 

When  all  is  done,  however,  in  this  direction,  we  shall 

still  be  burden-bearers.      Nature  has  taken  care  of 

that.     It    is    part    of    our    life's    inheritance.     As 

Matthew  Arnold  has  it,  "  And  we  feel,  day  and  night, 

the  burden  of  ourselves."     The  spiritual  conflict,  the 

sense  of  sin  and  un worthiness,  our  failures,  "  the  little 

done,  the  undone  vast,"  the  growing  infirmities,  the 

mystery  of  death  and  of  the  future,  all  this  does  not 

cease  its  pressure.     From  one  point  of  view  it  is  our 

tragedy ;    from    another   it  is   our    hope    and    our 

inspiration.     It  is  all  the  difference  of  having  faith 

or  being  without  it.     To  faith  it  spells  simply  the 

glory  of  our  incompleteness  ;   of  the  want  that  drives 

us  out  of  ourselves  to  find  our  refuge  in  God.     Victor 

Hugo,   in  his  "  Religions  et   Religion,"    paints  the 

despair  of  his  time  : 

Est-ce  tout  ?     A  quoi  bon  ?     Quel  choix  dans  la  nuit  noire  ? 
Le  hasard  de  nier,  ou  le  hasard  de  croire  ? 

Ah  !   if  it  were  only  a  hazard  !     But  faith's  venture, 

resolutely   pursued,    gets   beyond  that   stage.     The 

seeker   finds.     The   pilgrim,    toiling   with   his   load, 

bemired  with  the  Slough  of  Despond,  reaches  his 

place  of  deliverance,   reaches  a   Helper  who  bears 

for  him  and  with  him.     In  that  strength  he  goes  on 

with  new  courage,  with  a  joyous  heart.     He  finds 

Hope   for   his    companion,    combats   valiantly  with 

Apollyon  and  Giant  Despair,  reaches  his  Delectable 

Mountains,  is  guest  in  Interpreter's  house,  traverses 

his  Valley  of  Humiliation  and  finds  it  sweet,  knows 

182 


The   Burden 

his  Beulah,  is  not  afraid  of  the  river  of  Death,  for  he 
sees  behind  it  the  gleaming  pinnacles  of  the  Celestial 
City.  He  has  heard  the  great  "Come  unto  Me;" 
he  has  "  cast  his  burden  on  the  Lord  "  !  Happy 
they  who,  with  their  burden,  have  found  the  way  to 
carry  it,  and  the  road  to  travel  with  it. 


183 


XVIII 

ARE  WE  SANE  ? 

It  seems  an  entirely  disagreeable,  perhaps  even  an 
impudent  question.  Its  suggestion  of  Bedlam  as 
the  proper  place  for  us  all  :  may  not  that  be  evidence 
that  Bedlam  is  the  appropriate  place  for  the  writer  ? 
Maybe,  but  he  will  take  that  risk.  The  proposition 
may  be  extravagant,  but  extravagances  have  their 
use.  They  are  sometimes  the  only  way  of  getting 
sense  into  people.  We  are  so  apt  to  think  well  of 
ourselves,  to  praise  up  our  pretty  little  world  and  our 
precious  selves  as  part  of  it,  that  it  is  good  for  our 
health  to  remember  that  a  quite  other  view  is  at  least 
conceivable.  Let  us  imagine,  for  instance,  that  a 
complete  outsider — a  messenger,  say,  from  Mars  or 
some  other  extraneous  planet — should  pay  us  a  visit 
and  examine  our  civilisation  as  it  exists  to-day.  We 
may  suppose  him  as  entirely  intelligent,  entirely 
reasonable  ;  acquainted,  moreover,  with  our  accepted 
canons  of  reason  ;  knowing  what  we  accept  as  good 
and  as  evil ;  knowing  what  our  best  thought  tells  us, 
what  it  accepts  as  sanity  ;  and  observing,  at  the  same 
time,  the  things  we  actually  do.  What,  we  ask, 
would  his  verdict  be,  and  what  would  be  the  grounds 
for  his  verdict  ?  That,  at  any  rate,  seems  a  sane 
proposition.  He  would  find  a  goodly  number  of 
lunatic  asylums — their  number  and  population 
are  largely  increasing.     Might  he  not  conceivably  go 

184 


Are  We  Sane  ? 

away  with  the  impression,  and  transmit  it  to  his 
wondering  trans-spatial  audience,  that  our  earth 
itself  is  a  lunatic  asylum  ;  that  'tis  indeed  "  a  mad 
world,  my  masters  !  " 

What  would  he  find  amongst  us  ?  He  studies, 
for  instance,  one  of  our  modern  wars  and  its  sequel. 
One  people  has  a  quarrel  with  another  ;  it  is  perhaps 
over  territory,  or  business,  or  some  racial  bitterness. 
They  rush  to  arms;  there  is  battle  after  battle,  and 
scenes  of  inconceivable  horror  and  devilry.  Whole 
tracts  are  desolated,  towns  and  villages  are  burned, 
women  and  children  slaughtered,  animals  subjected 
to  horrible  tortures.  Commerce  and  industry  are 
stopped ;  everything  that  makes  for  life  and  happi- 
ness put  back.  Then,  when  each  side  is  exhausted, 
bled  to  the  white,  a  halt  is  called.  Representatives 
of  each  meet  round  a  board,  discuss  their  quarrel, 
argue  the  matter  out  on  terms  of  reason,  of  mutual 
give  and  take,  come  to  an  understanding,  and  take 
up  again  with  peace  and  industry  under  these  terribly 
reduced  terms.  But,  he  asks,  if  the  matter  is  finally 
settled  by  reason,  the  only  conceivable  way,  why  did 
they  not  recognise  this  before  ?  If  reason  is  the  only 
way  now,  was  it  not  the  only  way  then  ?  Did  it 
take  all  these  rivers  of  blood  to  show  them  that  fact  ? 
In  the  course  of  the  war  he  notices  a  curious  thing. 
Following  the  camps  are  hospitals  with  elaborate 
equipments,  an  array  of  people  wearing  red  crosses. 
Their  business,  he  finds,  is  to  heal  and  save.  The 
guns  and  rifles  in  front  are  busy  maiming  and  destroy- 
ing ;  and  when  that  business  is  over  these  others 
are  equally  busy  trying  to  undo  the  deadly  work. 
The  one  set,  in  overwhelming  proportions,  are  smash- 
ing up  everything  ;  the  other  are  trying  their  hardest 

185 


Faith's    Certainties 

to  undo  what  the  others  have  done.     What  is  he  to 
make  of  it  all  ?     Is  it  Bedlam  ? 

From  the  fighters  he  comes  to  the  people  who  are 
not  fighting.  He  finds  them  all,  the  highest,  the  most 
civilised  nations,  engaged,  at  enormous,  devastating 
cost,  in  preparing  to  fight.  The  money  spent  on 
these  preparations,  if  used  for  agriculture,  for  manu- 
facture, would  abolish  poverty  and  turn  the  earth 
into  a  paradise.  He  is  told  that  these  armaments 
are  built  and  maintained  to  ensure  the  world's  peace. 
He  is  surprised.  He  sees  that  unarmed  people  are 
the  people  of  peace  ;  that  in  communities  where 
every  man  carries  a  revolver  or  a  dagger  there  the 
most  murders  are  committed.  Is  not  that  a  truth  for 
nations  as  well  as  men  ?  And  when  you  have 
brought  your  armies  and  fleets  into  play,  will  not 
the  trouble  have  to  be  settled  in  the  end,  not  by 
cannons  and  bayonets,  but  by  that  council  board  and 
the  calling  in  of  reason  ?  Does  the  cannon  ever 
settle  anything  or  ever  bring  peace  ?  He  finds  in 
actual  existence  a  singular  thing.  Two  great  nations, 
who  have  fought  each  other  of  old,  England  and 
America,  have  now  for  a  century  tried  the  principle 
of  unarmed  peace  and  found  it  work  perfectly. 
Between  Canada  and  the  United  States  there  exists 
thousands  of  miles  of  boundary  line.  On  the  great 
lakes,  which  form  part  of  the  boundary,  not  a  war- 
ship ;  along  the  vast  stretches  of  mainland,  not  a 
regiment,  not  a  sentry-box.  And  all  goes  well ;  no 
thought  of  aggression  on  either  side.  Here  in 
England  there  were  once  seven  kingdoms,  all  armed 
against  each  other.  Now  Wessex  never  dreams  of 
arming  against  Northumbria.  They  can  settle  their 
affairs  in  a  better  way.     And  yet,  as  if  all  this  did  not 

i86 


Are  We  Sane  ? 

exist,  as  if  it  had  taught  no  lesson,  the  nations  go  on 
arming,  and  ruining  themselves  in  the  process.  They 
have  not  seen  yet,  with  such  plain  object-lessons 
before  their  eyes,  that  if  every  ugly  warship  were 
at  the  bottom  of  the  sea  and  all  the  swords  done  into 
ploughshares,  the  world  in  five  years  would  double  its 
wealth  and  double  its  happiness.  Instead,  they  build 
more  warships.     Is  it  not  a  queer  world  ? 

He  looks  a  little  closer  into  our  industries.  Here 
he  finds  the  workmen  massed  into  one  army,  the 
capitalists  into  another.  They  are  full  of  the  notion 
that  their  interests  are  hostile  ;  their  camps  are  full 
of  war-cries.  Every  now  and  then  the  hostilities 
break  out  into  open  war,  and  we  have  the  strike. 
Vhe  mills  are  closed,  the  mines  emptied  of  the  coal 
winners,  the  trains  cease  to  run.  Everywhere 
confusion,  enormous  losses,  starvation  in  the  workers' 
homes.  Then  when  everybody  has  reached  the  limit 
of  wretchedness,  a  conference  is  called.  Again  the 
council  board,  where  the  opposing  parties  meet  and 
talk  matters  over.  After  fighting,  then  reason.  Of 
course,  there  was  only  one  way  of  settling  matters,  by 
this  process  of  reasoning.  But,  our  inquirer  asks, 
did  they  not  know  that  before  ?  Do  these  people 
never  reason  till  their  bellies  are  empty  ?  Their 
reason  was  there,  in  them,  at  the  beginning.  Why 
had  it  to  wait  for  its  innings  till  all  these  other  stupid, 
impossible  ways  had  been  tried  ?  Surely  this  is  a 
people  with  whom  reason  comes  in  last,  where  it 
appears  spasmodically,  at  rare  intervals.  But  is  not 
that  the  way  of  things  in  Bedlam  ? 

The  odd  thing,  our  observer  would  reflect,  is 
that  these  people  knew  all  these  commonplaces  ages 
ago.     All  their  great  reHgions  had  taught  them.     He 

187 


Faith's    Certainties 

turns  up  an  old  book  of  the  East,  the  creed  of  miUions 
there.  He  reads  in  the  "  Dhamanapada"  :  *'For 
hatred  does  not  cease  by  hatred  at  any  time  ;  hatred 
ceases  by  love,  the  old  rule.  Let  a  man  overcome 
anger  by  love,  let  him  overcome  evil  by  good,  let  him 
overcome  the  greedy  by  liberality,  the  liar  by  truth." 
Christianity,  he  finds,  has  taught  the  same  thing  for 
ages.  The  watchword  its  Founder  gave  His  disciples 
was,  "  But  I  say  unto  you.  Love  your  enemies,  bless 
them  that  curse  you,  do  good  to  them  that  hate  you 
and  despitefully  use  you."  In  this.  He  said,  they 
would  be  doing  the  will  of  their  Father  in  heaven, 
who  caused  His  sun  to  shine  on  the  evil  and  on  the 
good,  who  sent  His  rain  upon  the  just  and  the  unjust. 
This  watchword  is  printed  in  all  the  Bibles,  is  read 
out  constantly  in  all  the  churches,  is  known  by  heart 
to  all  the  millions  of  Christian  adherents.  The 
Teacher  Himself  showed  His  certainty  of  this  doctrine 
by  His  own  conduct.  He  repudiated  wrath  as 
belonging  either  to  Himself  or  to  Him  who  had  sent 
Him.  When  on  the  cross,  suffering  from  the  worst 
crime  ever  committed.  He  had  nothing  but  love 
towards  His  assassins.  The  wrong  done,  He  said, 
was  not  so  much  badness  as  stupidity.  These  poor 
people  did  not  know  what  they  were  doing.  The 
only  thing  was  to  forgive  them.  Their  evil  was  to 
be  warred  on  by  love,  the  only  way.  This  was 
nineteen  centuries  ago,  and  the  world  is  still  acting 
as  though  its  persistent  blood  and  murder  system 
were  the  only  sanity,  and  as  though  it  were  Christ 
who  was  insane.  When  Jean  Mesler,  the  blasphe- 
mous French  priest,  declared  t'hat  Jesus  was  Don 
Quixote  and  St.  Peter  Sancho  'Panza  ti\e  orthodox 
world  was  deeply  shocked.     The  reflection,   oi  our 

i88 


Are   We  Sane  ? 

Mars  messenger  would  probably  be,  that  the  French 
ecclesiastic  had  put  into  words  the  actual  belief 
on  which  Christendom  had  ever  since  been  acting. 
It  is  only  now  really  dawning  upon  us,  and  that  in 
a  faint  and  far  off  way,  that  Jesus,  after  all,  may  have 
been  sane,  and  that  it  is  the  rest  of  us  who  lack 
sanity. 

We  have  here  introduced  the  question  of  religion, 
of  Christianity.  On  this  subject  our  visiting  critic 
would  make  some  curious  discoveries.  He  would 
find  what  Christians  had  made  of  their  religion,  had 
made  of  its  doctrine  and  of  its  practice.  The 
Founder's  doctrine,  as  taught  and  practised,  had 
been  that  of  forgiveness  and  love,  good,  by  its  sheer 
goodness,  overcoming  evil.  It  was  what  God  did  in 
heaven,  what  He  did  on  earth.  His  followers,  in  a 
few  centuries,  had  twisted  this  into  an  elaborate 
system  of  metaphysical  assertions  which  had  nothing 
to  do  with  goodness  or  love,  assertions,  the  belief 
in  which  was  made  necessary  to  salvation.  Our 
Martian  would  be  ready  to  say  with  the  writer  of 
"  The  New  Word  "  :  "  Falsehood  is  found  in  every 
religion,  but  only  in  Catholic  Christianity  is  it  the 
foundation  of  religion.  The  first  word  in  Buddhism 
is  '  Know,'  the  first  word  of  Catholicism  is  *  Believe.' 
And  the  merit  lies  not  in  believing  what  is  true,  but 
in  believing  what  is  false."  And  through  deluded 
centuries  the  notion  has  actually  prevailed  that  this 
saving  belief  could  be  wrought  in  men  by  authority, 
by  fear  and  violence.  If  the  people  who  acted  thus, 
the  persecutors,  the  dogmatists,  had  had  the  faintest 
inkling  in  them  of  psychology,  of  the  way  the  soul 
acts,  such  an  attitude  would  have  been  impossible. 
They  would  have  seen  that  you  can  no  more  make 

189 


Faith's    Certainties 

a  man  believe  by  compulsion,  in  any  of  its  forms,  than 
you  can  by  compulsion  make  him  ten  feet  tall  or  give 
him  a  third  eye.  Belief  is  a  result  of  evidence  and 
of  nothing  else  in  this  world.  You  can  by  authority 
make  a  man  fear,  and  submit,  and  subscribe ;  you 
can  only  make  him  believe  by  giving  him  facts. 
Luther,  in  his  best  days,  had  clearly  seen  that.  In 
his  "  Concerning  the  Bonds  of  Obedience  "  he  says  : 
"  Therefore  it  is  vain  and  impossible  to  compel  by 
force  this  belief  or  that  belief.  Force  does  not  do 
it.  It  is  a  free  work  in  faith  to  which  no  one  can  be 
forced."  As  Schopenhauer  puts  it  :  "  Der  Glaube 
ist  wie  die  Liebe;  er  lasst  sich  nicht  erzwingen"  (faith 
is  like  love  ;  it  cannot  be  forced). 

But  we  are  not,  most  of  us,  sane  enough  yet  to 
see  that.  Our  critic  might  go  further  in  his  in- 
vestigation of  doctrine,  discovering,  to  his  astonish- 
ment, that  its  further  developments  contradicted, 
in  the  most  ghastly  manner,  the  whole  teaching  of  the 
Founder.  In  place  of  His  doctrine  of  a  loving  God, 
who  sent  His  rain  on  the  just  and  the  unjust,  who 
overcame  badness  only  by  goodness,  he  finds  a  system 
dominating  the  Church  for  fifteen  centuries,  still 
extant  in  articles  and  catechisms,  which  makes  God 
a  hypocrite,  whose  goodness  is  simulated,  is  extended 
only  to  this  life  ;  who  has,  for  the  life  to  come,  a 
horrible  procedure  in  which  a  chosen  few  are  elected 
to  a  life  of  bUss,  while  the  mass,  upon  whom  His  sun 
has  shone,  are  relegated  to  an  eternity  of  hopeless 
torture.  The  most  infernal  system  of  ideas,  surely, 
that  ever  entered  the  human  brain !  And  this 
of  the  God  whom  Jesus  proclaimed  as  overcoming 
evil  only  by  good  !  We  say  with  Voltaire  :  "  Ce 
n  est  pas  ton  Dieu  ;  c  est  ton  Diable." 

190 


Are  Wc  Sane  ? 

From  the  thing  we  have  made  of  Christ's  doctrine 
our  investigator  turns  to  what  we  have  made  of  His 
example,  and  here,  too,  his  findings  would  be  equally 
remarkable.  He  reads  in  the  Gospels  that  Jesus 
was  born  into  a  carpenter's  family,  and  was  Himself  a 
carpenter.  He  would  suppose  that  those  who,  in 
all  ranks  of  society,  pay  to  Him  religious  devotion  in 
the  churches  would  regard  this  as  giving  to  honest 
labour,  in  its  humblest  forms,  a  special  dignity. 
Honour  surely  in  this  society,  if  nowhere  else,  to  the 
man  who  earns  his  living  by  the  sweat  of  his  brow  ! 
To  his  astonishment,  he  would  find  that  this  rule  in 
Christendom  is  observed  in  exactly  the  inverse  order. 
The  "  best  people,"  in  the  universally  accepted 
phrase,  are  the  people  who  do  nothing.  In  these 
circles  people  are  not  received  who  soil  their  hands 
with  work.  To  belong  here  you  must  be  at  least 
three  or  four  degrees  removed  from  the  vulgarity  of 
trade.  Our  visitor  might  go  to  a  cathedral  town 
and  find  there  the  residences  of  canons,  of  deans, 
perhaps  of  a  bishop.  They  are  the  well-paid 
representatives  of  Jesus  the  carpenter.  Are  any  of 
them  on  visiting  terms  with  carpenters  ?  Nowhere 
will  he  find  the  social  demarcations  more  rigidly 
marked  out.  H  Jesus  came  to  these  precincts  with 
mallet  and  adze  He  would  be  shown  the  back  door. 
You  may,  in  the  cathedral,  hear  orisons  intoned, 
with  correct  clerical  accent,  to  Jesus  as  a  meta- 
physical idea  ;  but  presume  that  the  actual  life  of 
Jesus  has  any  hints  upon  social  values  or  the  social 
order,  and  you  will  find  out  your  mistake.  Was  there 
ever  a  queerer  world  ? 

On  the  whole,  we  fear  that  our  friend's  report  of 
us  would  be  the  reverse  of  complimentary.     If  we 

191 


Faith^s    Certainties 

are  ever  in  our  right  mind  it  is  only  by  fits  and  starts, 
with  quick  reversions  to  the  old  unreason.  The 
Latin  poet,  he  might  say,  in  describing  himself  has 
described  the  race  :  Videor  meliora  proboque,  sed 
deteriora  sequor  (I  see  and  admire  the  better,  but  I 
follow  the  worse).  Still,  would  his  report  be  a  correct 
one  ?  We  have  imagined  him  here  as  on  a  cursory 
visit,  in  which  he  has  had  time  to  record  only  his 
first  impressions.  We  who  are  of  the  race,  and  know 
it  from  inside,  could  add  some  elucidations  and 
corrections.  We  might  agree  with  him  that  we  are 
not  entirely  sane,  but  we  could  add  that  we  are  on 
the  way  to  sanity.  A  mind  better  than  our  own  is 
evidently  in  charge  of  us,  and  leading  us  on  towards 
its  own  level.  It  is  constructing  a  kingdom  of 
rationality  in  a  being  who  began  with  faintest  dawns 
of  reason — a  rude  animal,  dominated  by  brute 
instincts,  derived  from  a  still  lower  ancestry.  Man  as 
he  is  to-day  is  only  half  himself ;  still  struggling  with 
a  coil  of  old  insanities.  History  shows  us  his  long 
struggle  with  them,  his  slow  emergence  from  them. 
Perhaps  the  vividest  idea  of  it  in  the  old  world  is 
given  us  in  the  Greek  drama.  ^Eschylus,  in  the 
"  Choephori,"  represents  the  triumph  of  the  law  of 
the  lex  talionis  :  "  O  great  Parcae,  may  Jupiter  cause 
the  triumph  of  the  law  that  outrage  shall  be  punished 
by  outrage,  that  murder  avenge  murder,  evil  for 
evil."  It  is  the  law  of  the  ancient  time.  So  we  see 
Agamemnon  sacrificing  Iphigenia,  Clytemnestra 
her  mother  kills  Agamemnon,  the  son  of  Agamemnon 
kills  Clytemnestra,  and  the  Furies  pursue  him  for 
this  murder.  Then  the  poet,  on  whom  the  new 
spirit  has  dawned,  in  the  "  Eumenides  "  proclaims 
the  aboUtion  of  this  law.     At  the  temple  of  Delphi, 

192 


Are  We  Sane  ? 

whither  Orestes  has  fled,  Minerva  dissuades  the 
Furies  from  their  vengeance.  They  now  cry  : 
"  Let  discord,  insatiable  of  crimes,  no  longer  make 
its  voice  heard  ;  may  the  blood  of  citizens  no  longer 
dye  the  ground ;  may  never  again  men  become 
murderers  to  avenge  a  murder  ;  may  the  interest  of 
the  state  reign  henceforth  in  all  hearts.  Be  united, 
O  Athenians,  in  a  common  love,  in  a  common  hate 
against  the  enemy." 

That  was  a  step  towards  sanity,  but  only  a  step. 
Man  was  still  fumbUng  after  the  true  formula  of  his 
humanity.  That  was  reached  when  Jesus  told  His 
disciples  to  love  not  only  their  own  race  but  all  races, 
their  enemies  even,  because  God  loved  and  cared  for 
them  all.  The  astonishing  thing  is  now  dawning 
upon  us  that  not  in  the  Church  with  its  blood- 
stained history  ;  not  in  theologies  with  their  brutal 
affirmations  about  God  and  man;  not  in  modern 
society  with  its  hypocrisies,  its  make-believes  ;  not 
in  ourselves  with  our  vanities,  our  jealousies,  our 
constant  lapses  ;  but  in  Christ,  in  that  life,  teaching 
and  example,  is  the  only  human  sanity.  That  is  why 
with  a  quite  new  accent  and  fervour  of  belief,  we  say 
that  in  Him  the  eternal  came  to  birth,  that  in  Him 
the  Mind  that  was  from  the  beginning,  that  through 
the  ages  wrought  in  our  race  to  bring  it  from  animal 
to  man,  discloses  here  its  clearest,  highest  mani- 
festation. And  only  do  we  approximate  to  sanity 
as,  in  word,  and  thought,  and  deed,  we  follow  Him. 


193 

13 


XIX 

LINES  LEFT  OUT 

There  is  a  well-known  child's  book  on  religion 
with  this  title.  Its  purpose  was  to  fill  up  what,  in  a 
previous  publication,  had  been  omitted.  It  is  a 
suggestive  title,  which  may  carry  us  a  good  deal 
further  than  this  first  use  of  it.  Left  out  !  One 
could  build  a  mountain  range  with  what,  in  the 
world  of  print,  has  been  left  out.  Think  of  all  the 
letters  to  newspaper  editors  that  never  see  the  hght  ! 
Think  of  the  devastations  daily  wrought  by  the 
editor's  blue  pencil  !  Printing  presses  are  roaring 
all  the  year  with  new  publications.  They  would  have 
to  be  multiplied  a  hundred  fold  if  all  the  written 
manuscripts  reached  them,  instead  of  the  intervening 
waste-paper  basket.  And  the  unpubhshed  is  only  a 
part  of  the  matter.  Your  most  voluminous  author 
gives  only  a  fraction  of  what  he  has  thought  and 
dreamed  and  begun  at.  Gibbon  essayed  a  dozen 
subjects,  and  spent  no  inconsiderable  time  over  them, 
before  he  settled  down  finally  to  the  "  DecUne  and 
Fall."  Balzac  was  a  terror  to  the  compositors. 
His  proofs  were  returned  to  them  one  mass  of  cor- 
rections, of  fines  left  out,  of  new  matter  interleaved. 
Cries  Stevenson  :  "  Oh,  if  I  knew  how  to  omit  !  " 
Now  he  is  gone  we  are  glad  he  did  not  omit  more. 
How  we  have  all  wondered  over  those  lines  left  out 

194 


Lines    Left   Out 

in  "  Edwin  Drood,"  cancelled  by  the  grim  editor, 
Death  !  Sir  Robertson  NicoU  has  given  us  an  excellent 
study  on  the  problem.  But  how  we  wish  we  had 
Dickens's  own  solution  ! 

There  is  a  vast  deal  more  printed  matter  in  the 
world  than  any  of  us  can  properly  manage.  On  the 
whole,  we  may  be  glad  of  what  has  been  left  out. 
So  much  of  it  is  superfluous,  a  mere  copying,  "  a 
damnable  iteration."  Yet,  despite  this  super- 
abundance, it  remains  that  one  of  the  outstanding 
defects  of  the  current  literature  and  of  our  public 
life  to-day  is  in  the  lines  left  out,  in  the  things  that 
are  not  said  and  that  should  be  said.  Take  our 
journalism.  Of  late  we  have  been  afraid  to  open  our 
newspaper.  Day  after  day  the  breakfast  hour  has 
been  spoiled  by  its  recital  of  horrors  ;  horrors  of 
the  air,  of  the  road,  of  the  mine,  of  the  sea.  The 
latest  catastrophe,  the  newest  villainy ;  these  are  the 
first  things  that  strike  the  eye.  Heavens,  what  a 
world  to  live  in  !  Yes,  if  that  were  the  only  news  of 
it.  It  is  the  curse  of  the  Press  that  this  is  the  kind  of 
thing  it  has  chiefly  to  print.  And  yet  what  a 
fractional  part  all  this  of  the  world's  real  life  !  For 
fifty  years  yonder  street  has  led  its  quiet,  comfortless 
existence,  with  its  homely  traffics,  its  good  cheer,  its 
social  joys,  nothing  of  which  has  ever  crept  into  your 
journal.  Let  a  murder  be  committed  there,  and  this, 
for  the  listening  outside  world,  is  the  one  history  of 
that  street.  And  so  it  is  that  in  the  Press,  and  in  a 
more  enduring  manner,  in  history  and  literature,  the 
world,  without  deserving  it,  gets  a  bad  name.  The 
solid  happinesses  of  it  are  not  good  enough  copy 
for  your  reporter,  your  dramatist.  Some  day  we 
may  get  an  inspired  literature  which  shall  make  the 

195 


Faith's    Certainties 

common  life,  with  its  enormous  balance  of  good,  so 
vivid,  so  interesting,  as  to  outcharm  the  present 
vogue  for  the  sordid  and  the  horrible. 

And  when,  in  the  world  of  politics,  shall  we  get 
the  '*  hues  left  out  "  ?  Our  party  system,  as  at 
present  conducted,  is  immoral  to  this  extent — that 
neither  side  will  give  us  the  whole  truth  of  the  matter. 
What  a  way  of  dealing  with  a  nation's  well-being, 
this  of  abusing  and  ridiculing  your  opponent,  of 
omitting  all  the  strong  points  of  his  case,  and  fixing 
the  limehght  on  his  weak  ones  !  Who  in  his  senses 
would  go  to  the  ordinary  party  leading  article  for  the 
actual  facts  of  a  disputed  question  ?  Some  day,  one 
hopes,  politics  will  cease  to  be  a  cockpit  of  fighting 
passions  and  personal  ambitions ;  will  become 
instead  a  real  science,  and  proceed  on  the  methods  of 
science  ;  the  patient  investigation,  that  is,  of  all  that 
belongs  to  a  subject,  with  nothing  left  out  ;  leading 
to  conclusions  that  fit  the  facts.  But  we  are  a  long 
way  off  from  that.  We  may  have  to  wait  still 
longer  for  an  international  pohtics  that  proceeds  by 
the  same  rule.  The  old  hatreds,  still  so  rife,  are  so 
largely  due  to  the  lines  left  out.  Englishmen  used 
to  hate  Frenchmen,  and  Frenchmen  Englishmen, 
because  neither  side  knew  each  other.  When  we 
get  on  speaking  terms  ;  when  we  read  each  other's 
literature,  we  find  our  hearts  are  beating  to  the  same 
tune.  For  generations  American  lads  were  brought 
up  on  school  book  histories  which  painted  England 
as  the  enemy.  It  is  only  just  recently  that  a  better 
understanding  has  produced  a  better  school  book  ; 
one  where  the  left  out  hues  have  been  put  in.  The 
American  is  beginning  to  learn  that  it  was  not  the 
EngHsh  people,  but  the  crass  EngHsh  Government, 

196 


Lines    Left   Out 

a  Government  with  a  foreign  and  half-crazy  king  at 
its  head,  that  was  against  their  hberties  ;  that  the 
real  England,  represented  by  its  noblest  sons,  by 
Chatham,  and  Burke,  and  Fox,  and  Conway,  and 
Walpole,  was  on  their  side,  all  against  the  policy 
which  brought  on  the  final  rebellion.  To-day  we 
are  learning  yet  another  lesson,  a  line  left  out  of  all 
the  old  political  calculations  ;  the  lesson  that  the 
prosperity  of  one  nation  helps  the  prosperity  of  all, 
and  that,  consequently,  the  war  that  ruins  one  people 
is  the  surest  way  of  ruining  their  conquerors.  We 
are  getting  on  by  degrees,  but  how  slowly !  Future 
generations  will  assuredly  see  us  all  as  on  the  dunce's 
form  of  the  political  school. 

The  world  is  progressing,  with  infinite  slowness 
it  is  true,  yet  progressing  towards  a  higher  moral 
state.  If  we  investigate  the  causes  of  that,  we  come 
upon  some  deep  things.  We  have  heard  of  manu- 
scripts written  with  invisible  ink  ;  ink  which  only 
shows  itself  in  certain  conditions,  when  treated  in  a 
certain  way.  You  heat  it,  or  treat  it  with  chemicals, 
and  then  the  hidden  writing  appears.  As  we  study 
human  nature  we  find  the  soul  of  it  written  all  over 
with  invisible  ink,  with  messages  subtly  wrapped  up 
in  its  texture,  which  by  degrees  are  becoming  legible. 
Comte,  in  his  "  Positivism,"  argues  that  man's 
rehgion,  in  so  far  as  it  looked  beyond  earth,  was 
only  a  phase,  which  would  in  the  end  yield  to 
science,  as  he  understood  science.  There  are  few 
scientists  satisfied  with  Comte  to-day.  We  see  too 
clearly  that  were  there  not  underlying  all  things,  and 
before  all  things,  a  universal  Reason,  there  could  be 
no  science  ;  for  science,  in  its  every  process  and 
deduction,  supposes  that  Reason,  and  leans  upon  it. 

197 


Faith's    Certainties 

We  think,  because  the  universe  thinks,  has  a  mind  at 
work.  Science  is  the  perpetual  questioning  of  that 
mind  and  the  reception  of  its  answers.  The  answers 
are  always  coherent ;  if  they  were  not  we  should 
indeed  be  in  a  fool-universe.  Those  lines,  printed 
in  us,  of  an  inherent  rationality,  holding  all  things 
together,  as  they  showed  more  clearly  in  the  human 
consciousness,  became  the  groundwork  of  science,  its 
apparatus  of  proof. 

But  other  lines  have  come  into  view.  The  soul 
which  finds  in  itself  those  imprints  of  the  rational,  finds 
also  imprints  of  something  more  intimate  and  more 
beautiful ;  imprints  of  a  Personality  that  is  loving 
and  holy,  and  that  seeks  to  form  in  us  a  likeness  of 
itself.  Whence  come  our  ideals  ;  our  sense  of  the 
good  and  our  yearning  for  it ;  the  disgust  at  our 
moral  failures,  our  thirst  of  perfection  ?  They  are 
the  stuff  of  which  we  are  made,  and  they  point  as 
surely  to  a  fulfilment  as  the  structure  of  the  eye 
points  to  the  vision  which  light  brings  to  it.  This 
consciousness,  in  vast  numbers  of  our  fellows,  is  a 
feeble  enough  affair  ;  seems  in  many  almost  non- 
existent. It  is  well,  on  these  matters,  to  think 
geologically,  if  only  as  a  curb  on  our  impatience. 
Could  we  have  seen  our  earth  in  some  of  its  early 
stages,  when  it  was  a  chaotic,  unformed  mass,  its 
atmosphere  laden  with  mephitic  vapours,  its  surface 
rent  with  hideous  explosions,  we  could  hardly  have 
conceived  of  it  as  a  place  of  quiet  valleys,  of  running 
streams,  the  dream  of  beauty  that  it  is.  But  the  lines 
of  all  that  were  there,  hidden  deep  down,  and  ready 
to  appear  in  their  time.  Man  is  as  yet  in  his  un- 
formed, volcanic  period  ;  his  greater  age  is  yet  to 
come.     The  great  thing  is  that  God,  who  was  in  the 

198 


Lines    Left    Out 

earth,  forming  it,  is  in  the  soul,  and  will  work  His 
will  there.  He  is  in  those  who  do  not  yet  recognise 
the  fact.  We  are  so  much  more  than  we  know,  and 
we  cannot  escape  from  God. 

The  wonderful  thing  about  the  spiritual  life, 
so  far  as  we  know  it,  is  the  lines  that  are  left  out. 
There  is  enough  in  it  for  faith  and  hope  ;  but  the 
silences  with  which  it  is  encompassed  !  We  have 
spiritual  instincts,  impulses,  suggestions,  hints,  and 
all  around  them  this  vast,  uncanny  reticence  !  The 
star-strewn  heavens  look  down  upon  our  catas- 
trophes, our  disappointments,  our  deaths,  as  it 
seems,  all  unheeding.  We  ask  our  questions,  and 
they  yield  no  answer.  Man,  impatient,  urges  his 
doubts,  propagates  his  infidelities,  falls  into  moody 
pessimisms,  and  still  no  answer.  His  conversation 
with  the  sky  seems  entirely  onesided.  His  passionate 
appeal  is  without  response.  So  we  say — in  our  bad 
moments.  When  we  are  better  inspired  we  discover 
we  have  been  looking  in  the  wrong  direction. 
Augustine,  after  passing  through  that  agony,  found 
this  out.  "  I  was  looking  for  Thee  without,  and  lo  ! 
Thou  wast  within."  For  it  is  in  man  himself  that 
God  is  working  towards  His  fuller  expression,  that 
He  is  planting  the  clearer  knowledge  of  Himself. 
And  in  man  the  lines  are  coming  more  and  more 
plainly  into  view.  When  we  have  reached  the  true 
knowledge  of  ourselves,  we  shall  have  reached  the 
true  knowledge  of  the  universe.  When  our  sight 
and  our  hearing  are  purged,  have  reached  their 
higher  powers,  we  shall  see  and  hear  Him  there  in 
a  new  fashion. 

This  is  the  lesson  which  Christianity  offers  us, 
the  lesson  that  God  is,  above  all  things,  to  be  found 

199 


Faith^s    Certainties 

in  man.  It  shows  us,  in  the  earlier  human  history, 
the  God-consciousness  coming  to  itself  in  patriarchs 
and  prophets,  souls  spiritually  sensitive,  awake 
to  the  whispers  of  the  hidden  voice.  Then  comes 
a  Son  of  Man,  in  whom  the  voice  is  clear  and  positive, 
the  vision  unclouded,  whom  the  race,  by  a  sure 
instinct,  is  learning  to  follow,  as  exhibiting  in  His 
life  and  teaching  the  surest  image  of  what  God  is, 
and  of  what  He  means  to  our  race. 

But  here,  as  in  nature,  the  marvellous  thing  is, 
with  the  new  hope,  the  reticence  which  surrounds  it. 
The  lines  that  appear,  bright  with  a  glory  truly  divine, 
are  what  first  strike  us,  filling  responsive  hearts  with 
faith  and  gladness.  But  immediately  we  are  set 
pondering  over  the  lines  left  out.  We  know  so  much 
of  Jesus  and  yet  so  little  !  We  have  His  history  in 
four  little  pamphlets  which  came  into  the  world 
almost  anyhow.  Justin  Martyr,  the  philosopher 
whom  they  converted,  calls  them  "  barbarian 
writings."  Two  of  them,  Matthew  and  Luke,  are 
largely  borrowed  from  the  third,  Mark.  The 
borrowings  are  from  a  mutilated  copy  which  seems 
at  the  time  to  have  been  about  the  only  one  in 
existence.  Of  the  400  days  to  which  the  ministry, 
at  the  shortest  estimate,  must  have  extended,  we 
have  in  these  pamphlets,  at  the  most,  a  narrative  of 
not  more  than  forty  separate  days.  And,  as 
Professor  Caird  says,  we  owe  those  records  to  the 
narrow  Jewish  Church,  a  debt,  he  adds,  greater  than 
that  we  owe  even  to  St.  Paul.  "  For  it  did  not  pass 
away  till  it  had  gathered  together  those  records  of  the 
early  life  of  Jesus  according  to  the  flesh,  in  the  absence 
of  which  even  the  teaching  of  St.  Paul  would  have 
become  little  better  than  an  abstract  dogma." 

200 


Lines    Left    Out 

As  we  study  the  writings  that  have  come  to  us 
in  this  strange  fashion — that  have,  as  it  were, 
fortuitously  dribbled  into  the  world — we  are  con- 
tinually fronted  with  this  mystery  of  the  lines  left 
out.  Jesus  has  thrown  upon  certain  questions  a 
dazzling  light.  Upon  a  thousand  others  there  is  no 
illumination.  It  is  brought  up  against  Him  that 
He  knows  nothing,  apparently,  of  modern  science, 
of  modern  philosophy,  of  modern  economics.  No 
one  goes  to  the  New  Testament  for  mathematics,  or 
chemistry,  or  biology,  or  painting  or  music.  There 
is  no  exposition  here  of  international  law,  of  the 
government  of  states,  of  monarchism,  or  repub- 
licanism, of  capital  and  labour,  of  a  hundred  things 
that  agitate  the  modern  mind.  On  whole  ranges  of 
theology,  which  our  later  scribes  have  filled  with 
their  propositions,  on  human  origins,  on  Biblical 
inspiration,  on  Church  orders  and  governments, 
there  is  no  decisive  word.  What  you  have  is  just 
Himself,  His  life.  His  conversations.  His  death, 
and  the  wondrous  things  that  followed  His  death. 
So  much,  and  then  the  blank. 

Does  this  blank  stagger  us  ?  It  need  not.  The 
economy  here  is  exactly  the  economy  we  find  in 
nature.  So  much  given,  and  the  rest  left.  The 
helps  given  to  us  have  always  these  wide  unfilled 
margins.  They  are  the  exercise  grounds  where  we 
are  to  help  ourselves.  "  Here,"  says  the  Word  to  us, 
"  is  your  hint  ;  now  grow  by  following  it  out." 
What  would  have  happened  had  Jesus  filled  out 
these  other  programmes  ?  Supposing  He  had  talked 
science  ?  If  it  were  modern  science,  it  would  to  His 
auditors  have  been  as  incomprehensible  as  though 
He  had  talked  Chinese.     If  it  were  level  to  their 

201 


Faith^s    Certainties 

existing  notions  it  would  all  have  been  outgrown. 
All  this  was  not  His  business  ;  and  for  the  reason 
that  it  is  our  own.  For  the  human  progress  is  not 
so  much  through  the  thing  learned  as  by  the  effort 
of  learning  it  ;  the  effort,  and  all  that  effort  brings 
to  us.  His  work  is  other  and  deeper.  It  is  not  at  the 
circumference  but  at  the  centre.  He  is  not  in  life's 
details,  but  in  life  itself.  He  gives  you  no  technique 
of  science  or  art  or  industry,  but  He  gives  you  the 
spirit  in  which  all  these  should  be  pursued,  the  end 
for  which  they  should  be  followed.  He  shows  us 
just  what  nature  means,  what  life  means,  the  Mind 
that  is  behind  it,  how  that  Mind  works,  what  its 
disposition  is,  the  spirit  it  is  of.  We  see  all  that  in 
Himself,  and  as  we  see  it  we  feel  the  truth  of  the 
presentation.  Our  soul  says  this  is  what  God  must 
be,  for  it  responds  to  all  our  deepest  soul  feels  as 
best  ;  the  qualities  of  being  and  doing  which  draw 
our  w^orship.  In  Him  we  discover  the  secret  of  God  ; 
the  secret  that  God  is  love,  and  that  His  love  is  of  the 
quality  that  suffers,  sacrifices,  pardons,  serves,  and 
will  be  content  with  naught  less  than  saving  and 
perfecting.  Jesus,  you  say,  has  not  taught  the  world 
this  or  that  ?  No,  but  He  has  done  so  much  more. 
He  has  inspired  the  whole  business  of  learning  and 
the  whole  business  of  doing  ;  inspired  it  so  that  every 
art  and  every  industry  under  that  influence  becomes 
holy,  and  secretes  a  joy  which,  without  Him,  it  could 
never  yield. 

Some  of  us,  who  have  fared  far  in  the  journey  of 
life,  who  have  busied  ourselves  with  its  varied 
cultures,  who  have  tested  its  chief  experiences  and 
appraised  their  values,  have  come  as  a  result  to  one 
assured    conviction.      Christ    is    the   heart    of    the 

202 


Lines    Left    Out 

mystery,  the  key  to  it  all.  And  life's  best  business, 
in  the  Church  or  out  of  it,  is  to  work  in  this  heady, 
tempestuous  civilisation  of  ours  for  the  restoring  of 
that  line,  now  so  largely  left  out,  the  line  of  the 
Christ  character,  the  Christ  life  ;  to  work  for  that, 
knowing  it  is  the  world's  only  health,  its  true 
sanity.  And  how  shall  we  do  that  ?  How  else 
than  by  having  the  lines  of  that  glorious  portraiture 
all  reproduced  and  showing  in  ourselves  ?  For  so 
essentially  divine  is  that  portraiture,  that  wherever, 
and  however  feebly,  men  see  it  reflected  in  their 
neighbour,  they  see  in  it  some  hint  of  the  heart  of 
God. 


203 


XX 

OF  SELF-EXPRESSION 

The  modern  cry  for  self-expression  is  a  puzzling, 
even  a  confounding  phenomenon.  There  are  such 
confused,  such  contradictory  elements  mixed  up  in 
it.  Almost  the  whole  gamut  of  sentiment  is  repre- 
sented there,  from  the  highest  to  the  lowest.  You 
may  find  in  it  tragedy,  comedy,  and  even  farce.  The 
cry  in  itself  seems  simple.  "  I  want  to  be  myself  ; 
to  have  liberty  and  opportunity  for  all  that  is  in  me 
to  grow  up  and  show  itself  ;  to  be  rid  of  the  thousand 
things  that  now  hamper  and  repress  my  develop- 
ment." What  can  be  more  reasonable  than  that  ? 
Whether  it  be  the  cry  of  Nora  in  Ibsen's  "  Doll's 
House  ;  "  or  that  of  the  underfed,  underpaid  worker, 
slave  to  his  machine  ;  or  that  of  the  independent 
thinker,  born  into  a  repressive,  unsympathetic 
milieu,  how  reasonable,  how  even  pathetic  it  seems  ! 
As  we  hear  the  cry,  we  realise  how,  in  what  are  called 
the  freest  countries,  the  problem  of  liberty  is  as  yet 
so  largely  unsolved  ;  how  supremely  difficult  it  still 
is  for  men  and  women  to  be  themselves  !  And  the 
question  is  infinitely  complicated  by  the  false  cries 
that  are  abroad.  Before  we  can  make  progress  here 
there  has  to  be  cleared  away  an  enormous  confusion 
of  issues.  We  want  first  to  know  what  is  the 
true  self-expression,  and,  on  the  way  to   that,  the 

204 


of   Self-Expression 


specious  counterfeits  of  it  that  are  continually  being 
offered. 

The  age  we  have  been  born  into  shows,  in  this 
matter,  a  queer  condition  of  things.  It  is  a  condition 
seemingly  dead  against  independence.  We  are,  we 
discover,  in  a  very  old  world,  a  world  which  has 
apparently  been  occupied  for  its  past  thousands  of 
years  in  deciding  beforehand  for  us  what  we  shall  do 
and  be.  The  world  is  not  an  open  country,  but  one 
crowded  with  boundary  walls,  with  trespass  notices, 
with  restrictions  here,  and  prohibitions  there  ;  with 
law,  religion,  custom,  fashion,  all  issuing  their 
separate  ukases  ;  all,  as  it  seems,  frowning  down 
upon  that  daring  imp  of  our  own  personality,  and 
defying  it  to  assert  itself.  Rousseau,  whose  cry 
of  protest  shook  his  world  to  its  foundations, 
compared  the  modern  man,  ensnared  in  these 
conventions,  to  a  child  who  from  his  birth  is 
trussed,  bound,  fettered  and  unable  to  use  his  own 
limbs.  He  called  for  a  return  to  nature,  without, 
however,  leaving  us  with  any  clear  idea  of  what 
that  means.  A  century  and  a  half  have  rolled 
away  since,  and  we  are  still  groaning.  Indeed, 
for  multitudes  the  economic  and  industrial  conditions 
of  to-day  have  placed  a  still  more  effectual  bar 
against  any  considerable  self-expression.  What 
chance  is  there  of  that  for  a  man  whose  bread 
depends  on  performing  thousands  of  times  a  day  one 
single  mechanical  operation,  perhaps  the  tenth  part 
of  the  manufacture  of  a  pin  or  of  a  shoe  !  How 
is  he  going  to  be  anything  but  a  machine,  or  the  part 
of  a  machine,  himself  ? 

The  vast  unrest  among  modern  workers,  where 
it  originates  in  a  desire  to  give  their  better  self  a 

205 


Faith's    Certainties 

chance,  despite  the  menace  it  brings  with  it,  is  a 
hopeful  symptom.  It  will  work  out  into  some 
changes  in  our  social  and  economic  system  which 
will  be  of  an  all-round  and  helpful  kind.  But  the 
search  for  independence,  for  a  freer  self-expression, 
not  in  one  class  only,  but  in  all,  which  is  characteristic 
of  our  time,  is,  of  all  quests,  the  one  where  we  may 
make  the  most  mistakes  and  go  farthest  astray.  The 
road  is  full  of  pitfalls,  of  bypaths  that  lead  to  preci- 
pices. Before  starting  out  here  we  need  to  ask 
ourselves  some  questions.  What  self  in  us  is  it  that 
we  want  to  give  a  chance  to  ?  by  what  means  do  we 
propose  to  give  it  that  chance  ?  and  what  are  we 
expecting  from  it  as  the  goal  of  our  hopes  ?  It  is 
supremely  interesting  to  watch  the  answer  that  men 
to-day  are  giving  to  these  questions,  giving  them, 
generally,  not  so  much  in  words  as  in  their  actions, 
in  the  directions  they  are  following.  In  studying 
them  we  get  a  view  of  the  amazing  complexity  of  the 
human  soul,  of  its  contradictions,  its  illusions,  its 
range  of  self-deception  ;  of  the  enormous  difficulty, 
in  some  natures  especially,  of  reaching  the  depths 
where  the  true  self  resides. 

An  illustration  of  the  wild  aberrations  possible 
on  this  question  is  furnished  by  a  school  of  writers, 
largely  Continental,  which  still  has  its  vogue,  who 
argue  that  for  a  proper  exposition  of  life,  in  the 
drama  and  in  fiction,  a  man  must  have  gone  through 
all  the  experiences  which  he  seeks  to  depict.  To 
paint  vice  accurately — and  so  much  of  their  painting 
is  of  that  genre— he  must  know  it  intimately.  One  of 
this  school  declares  that  Shakespeare  could  never 
have  written  his  dramas  if  he  had  been  respectable. 
To  understand  gutter  life  you  must  first  lie  down  in 

206 


of   Self-Expression 


the  gutter.  Most  of  these  teachers  have  followed 
their  prescription.  It  would,  perhaps,  be  more 
correct  to  say  that  they  began  with  their  passions 
and  then  sought  a  philosophy  which  would  fit  them. 
And  assuredly  they  have  here  succeeded  in  giving  a 
true  expression  of  themselves.  Their  writings  exhale 
the  corruption  of  diseased  souls.  But  is  their  defini- 
tion of  experience  here  a  true  one  ?  Can  we  only 
know  the  world's  evil  by  wallowing  in  it  ?  Teachers 
who  afhrm  this,  if  they  are  not  obfuscated  by  their 
own  way  of  living,  would  see  the  absurdity  of  the 
contention.  You  might  just  as  well  say  that  a  man 
could  never  become  an  Alpine  guide,  an  experienced 
mountaineer,  except  by  the  process  of  tumbling  down 
every  precipice  he  came  to.  But  is  that  the  way  ? 
Or  has  he  not  become  what  he  is,  not  by  breaking  his 
bones,  but  by  learning  how,  in  the  face  of  all  the 
dangers,  to  keep  them  unbroken  ?  If  this  were  a 
true  philosophy  our  physicians  would  gain  their 
knowledge  by  catching  all  the  diseases  they  deal 
with  ;  would  learn  the  dangers  of  alcohol  by  getting 
drunk  every  night  !  And  yet  this  is  the  talk  that 
passes  current  to-day  in  some  art  critic  and  literary 
circles,  amongst  people  who  speak  patronisingly 
of  "  conventional  morality,"  of  "  bourgeois  ethics," 
as  of  something  that,  with  superior  people,  went 
out  of  date  with  the  Victorian  era.  When  you  ask 
what  these  "  bourgeois  ethics  "  are,  you  find  they  are 
the  ethics  of  clean  living,  which  these  people  have 
long  since  forsaken.  All  this,  of  course,  is  a  kind  of 
self-expression.  But  the  expression  is  that  of  the 
satyr,  whose  bestial  leer  shows  through  the  works 
of  these  latest  worshippers,  a  leer  whose  essential 
ugliness  no  literary  device  can  hide. 

207 


Faith^s   Certainties 

A  more  subtle  question  arises  when,  in  this  matter 
of  self-expression,  we  come  upon  the  problem  of  the 
different  personalities  that  at  times  seem  to  inhabit 
us.  You  survey  a  man's  career  and  at  varying 
periods  of  it  you  might  be  in  contact  with  different 
men.  Or  at  the  same  period  you  shall  have  two 
opposites  at  war  with  each  other.  Renan  declared 
that  of  himself.  One  part  of  him  was  always  con- 
tradicting the  other.  Walt  Whitman  met  the 
accusation  of  inconsistency  in  a  characteristic 
manner.  "  I  am  large,"  said  he ;  "I  contain 
multitudes."  Sainte  Beuve  in  his  later  days 
declared  that  half  a  dozen  people  had  successively 
lived  and  died  in  him.  Meredith  has  been 
quoted  as  making  the  same  assertion  about  himself. 
And  he  adduced  this,  curiously  enough,  as  a  reason 
for  disbelief  of  any  survival  after  death  !  "  Which 
of  these  personalities  is  to  survive  ?  "  he  is  reported 
to  have  asked.  If  this  is  meant  for  an  argument  it 
is  a  singularly  weak  one.  The  obvious  reply  was  : 
"  But  here  are  you  who  have  actually  survived  them  ; 
and  are  you  not  the  same  *  you  '  all  the  time  ?  " 
The  feeling  of  identity  is  in  these  cases  always 
stronger  than  the  feeling  of  change.  Do  we  not, 
in  old  age,  feel  our  youth  ;  live  in  it  more  intensely 
even  than  when  we  are  young  ?  And  may  we  not 
conceive  an  after  state,  when  all  we  have  passed 
through,  all  the  changes  that  have  passed  in  us, 
shall  subsist,  in  their  essence,  as  part  of  the 
one  life?  Myers,  in  his  "Human  Personality," 
raises  here  some  fascinating  problems  ;  questions 
of  dual  or  triple  personalities,  existing  and 
expressing  themselves  in  the  same  ego ;  the 
question    as    to    whether    the    being    who     thinks, 

208 


of   Self-Expression 


feels  and  wills  in  each  of  us,  is  not  the  survival 
of  one  out  of  many  personalities  that  have 
struggled  in  us  for  supremacy. 

In  the  search,  then,  for  the  self  to  which  we  are  to 
give  a  chance  ;  which  we  are  to  strive  with  all  our 
might  to  develop  ;  which  we  are  at  all  costs  to  try 
and  express,  it  is  clear  we  are  in  face  of  some  diffi- 
culties. Of  all  the  complexities  in  this  universe,  we 
are  the  greatest  complex ;  the  greatest,  at  least, 
that  we  know.  In  this  business  there  are  such 
qualities  of  material,  of  diverse,  heterogeneous 
material,  that  we  can  use.  What  of  it  shall  we  use  ? 
Amid  the  confusion  one  thing  emerges  with  clearness. 
We  can  none  of  us  come  to  good  so  long  as  we  stand 
only  for  our  separate  self.  The  man  who  fights  for 
his  individual  ego — whether  you  call  his  motive 
ambition,  or  greed,  or  vanity,  or  passion,  or  self- 
interest — however  brilliant  his  powers,  however 
indomitable  his  industry,  will  never  count  for  much 
in  the  world's  history,  or  for  much  as  an  exponent 
of  life's  blessedness.  It  was  said  of  Napoleon,  one  of 
the  biggest  of  this  kind  of  experimenters,  *'  No  great 
principle  stood  by  him."  It  is  a  damning  indictment 
wherever  applied — an  indictment  which,  while  it 
condemns,  reveals.  It  shows,  as  with  the  flash  of  a 
searchlight,  the  futility  of  attempting  to  express  a 
self  which  goes  no  farther,  no  deeper  than  our  surface 
egotism. 

And  here  come  we  to  the  central  point,  down  to 
the  real  secret  of  life.  The  one  and  only  self  we 
can  afford  to  express  is  that  higher  self,  found  in 
the  holy  place  of  the  temple  buried  in  us  ;  which  is 
of  us,  and  yet  so  much  more  than  ourselves ;  the 
principle  of  unity  between  us  and  our  fellow,  between 

209 

u 


Faith^s    Certainties 

us  and  the  universe  outside  ;  the  self  which  shows 
in  us  as  principle,  as  conscience,  as  ultimate  moral 
authority  ;  the  self  whose  voice  is  ever  the  highest 
authority,  recognised  by  us  as  the  whisper  of  God. 
It  is  when  we  have  recognised  this  "  categorical 
imperative,"  this  law  which  is  in  us,  but  is  also 
beyond  and  above  us,  this  duality  in  unity  which 
makes  the  true  man  ;  it  is  then  we  find  our  place  in 
the  world,  our  work  in  it,  our  liberty  and  joy.  We 
learn  the  liberty  that  is  in  obedience,  the  only  liberty 
worth  the  name.  "  We  are  servants  of  all  the  laws 
that  we  may  be  free,"  says  Cicero.  Yes,  when  the 
law  rests  on  this  deepest  foundation.  To  get  God's 
will  done  in  us  and  by  us  ;  for  this  end  to  cultivate 
all  our  powers  to  finest  use  ;  to  get  it  done  by 
our  action,  by  our  influence,  by  our  suffering,  by  all 
that  belongs  to  our  life — this  is  the  self-expression 
of  the  Christian.  It  was  the  self-expression  of 
Christ,  an  expression  so  clear  in  its  revelation  of  an 
infinite  within  that  men  ever  since  have  been  reading 
in  it  the  character  of  God. 

What  is  the  man  of  this  type  going  to  do  with  all 
the  laws,  institutions,  codes  and  conventions  with 
which  he  finds  himself  surrounded  ?  He  will  obey 
a  great  many  of  them,  even  seeming  trivial  ones,  not 
simply  because  society  has  commanded  them,  but 
because  they  are  good.  When  our  feminine  mili- 
tants strike  against  laws  because  they  have  had  no 
hand  in  making  them,  they  should  remember  that  the 
mass  of  laws  which  both  the  men  and  women  of 
to-day  are  under  were  not  made  by  any  of  us,  men 
or  women,  now  living  ;  they  were  there  long  before 
we  were  born.  They  might  remember,  also,  that 
these  laws,  for  both  sexes,  are  not  so  much  coercive 

210 


of   Self-Expression 


as  protective.  Women,  as  well  as  men,  would  have 
had  small  chance  to-day  had  they  come  into  a  world 
without  them. 

And  yet  the  world's  greatest  spirits  have  figured 
often  enough  as  opponents  of  human  law  !  Again 
and  again  we  see  them  setting  the  might  of  their 
personaHty  against  a  whole  system  of  regulations, 
of  customs,  of  authorities.  Socrates  attacks  the 
Athenian  orthodoxy,  and  drinks  the  hemlock  ; 
Jesus  puts  His  "  I  say  unto  you  "  against  the  old 
religion  and  is  condemned  by  the  Church  authorities  ; 
Luther,  with  his  **  Here  stand  I ;  I  can  no  other," 
fronts  the  whole  might  of  the  empire  and  of  the 
hierarchy  ;  Bunyan  breaks  the  Conventicle  Act  and 
finds  himself  in  Bedford  Gaol ;  Wesley,  contrary 
to  episcopal  authority,  takes  to  field  preaching,  and 
is  cast  out  of  the  Establishment.  Here,  you  may  say, 
is  disobedience,  here  is  a  defiance  of  the  established 
order  ;  here  is  a  tremendous  self-assertion,  a  pitting 
of  the  single  ego  against  the  whole  system  held  as 
authoritative  and  sacred.  And  this  is  a  self- 
assertion  held  to-day  everywhere  in  honour ;  the 
rebels  have  become  consecrate.  Why,  then,  shall  we 
not  rebel,  break  laws,  or  windows,  if  we  want  to  ? 

In  all  this  we  need  to  see  the  one  thing  that 
matters.  The  great  deeds,  the  great  lives  we  have 
cited,  meant  always  one  thing.  And  that  one 
thing  was  not  disobedience,  but  obedience.  The 
great  spirits  of  the  past  were  law-breakers  because 
in  a  higher  sense  they  were  law-keepers.  They  acted 
and  suffered  not  in  self-will,  but  under  the  imperative 
of  a  higher  will.  Servants  were  they  of  a  new  law, 
whose  light  had  flamed  into  their  souls,  whose 
august  voice  they  felt  they  must  obey.     They  obeyed, 

211 


Faith's    Certainties 

too,  not  by  violence,  not  by  acts  of  paltry  mischief, 
but  by  the  proclamation  of  the  truth  that  had 
reached  them  ;  by  words  and  deeds  which  that 
truth  inspired.  Humanity,  in  its  movement  towards 
the  highest  law,  will,  it  would  seem,  need  still  its 
rebels  and  outcasts  of  that  type.  But  for  all  of  us, 
heroes  of  achievement  and  sacrifice,  or  humble 
toilers  of  the  common  way,  there  is,  we  say  again 
and  finally,  one  only  true  way  of  self-expression — it 
is  that  of  being  rooted  in  God  ;  or  making  our  daily 
life  the  outcome  of  the  divine  that  is  within.  John 
Smith,  the  old  Cambridge  Platonist,  pictures  for  us 
the  blessedness  of  the  man  who  has  thus  found 
himself.  "  He  moves  in  a  larger  sphere  than  his 
own  being  ;  and  cannot  be  content  to  enjoy  himself, 
except  he  may  enjoy  God,  too,  and  himself  in 
God." 


212 


XXI 

THE  SOMETHING  ADDED 

It  is  notorious  that  the  presence  or  absence  of 
some  one  element,  quite  insignificant  it  may  be,  in 
itself,  will  make  or  mar  the  most  elaborate  combi- 
nation. The  chef  knows  that  the  pinch  of  salt,  more 
or  less,  is  vital  to  his  sauce  or  ragout.  It  has  been 
said  that  it  is  to  the  presence  of  dust  in  the  atmo- 
sphere that  we  owe  our  blue  sky.  Without  it  the 
heavens  would  be  black  at  noon.  The  physiologists 
tell  us  that  in  the  2,000  atoms  in  a  molecule  of 
haemoglobin,  the  colouring  matter  of  the  blood,  there 
is  one  atom  of  iron.  Without  that  one  atom  our 
life  could  not  go  on,  for  it  is  its  presence  that  gives 
the  body  the  power  to  oxygenate  the  blood.  There 
is  a  piquant  remark  of  Mile,  de  Scudery  which,  in 
another  sphere  of  things,  illustrates  the  same  point. 
"  There  is,"  says  she,  "  a  something,  I  know  not  how 
to  express  it,  which  causes  the  presence  of  a  gentle- 
man to  divert  a  company  of  ladies  more  than  the 
most  amiable  woman  in  the  world  can."  The 
solitary  male,  in  view  of  the  French  lady,  appears 
to  be  the  dust  in  the  air  that  reveals  the  blue  sky, 
the  iron  atom  that  makes  the  feminine  blood 
circulate. 

One  could  multiply  these  examples.     They  meet 
us   everywhere.     There  are  so  many  failures  that 

213 


Faith's   Certainties 

are  so  near  success.  We  say  of  them,  "  a  little  more, 
and  how  much  it  is  ;  a  little  less,  and  what  worlds 
away  !  "  We  see  men  dowered  with  many  gifts, 
yet  who  somehow  miss  the  mark.  There  is  just  that 
pinch  of  salt  lacking  in  their  temperament  which 
would  have  made  the  whole  thing  go.  Why  are 
there  not  more  happy  people  in  the  world  ?  There 
is  such  a  vast  apparatus  of  happiness  around  us. 
Every  natural  act  has  its  own  pleasures  wrapped 
up  in  it.  Eating  and  drinking,  sleeping  and  waking, 
washing  and  bathing,  walking,  riding,  sitting  and  lying 
down,  hearing  and  seeing,  talking  and  thinking, 
reading,  working,  resting,  solitude,  society,  all 
these  are  in  themselves  enjoyments,  or  may  be  made 
such.  The  late  Sir  James  Paget,  from  his  vast 
surgical  experience,  averred  that  even  dying,  as  a 
natural  act,  had  its  own  quiet  pleasure.  Wealth 
is  supposed  to  contain  a  vast  sum  of  delights,  and 
there  are  more  wealthy  people  in  the  world  than 
ever  before.  And  with  it  all,  and  amid  the  well-to-do 
classes  not  less  than  among  the  ill-to-do,  there  seems 
never  to  have  been  so  many  discontented  people. 
Are  they  asking  too  much  of  life  ;  more  than  it  has 
to  offer  ;  or  is  there  the  pinch  of  salt  lacking  in 
themselves  ? 

Assuredly,  the  nature  of  things  has  a  good  will 
towards  us.  If  it  were  not  so,  how  comes  it  that 
pleasure  is  so  deeply  inwrought  into  all  we  are  and 
do  ?  But  nature  does  everything  by  halves  ;  she 
never  offers  the  complete  thing.  And  that  for  an 
evident  reason.  Her  whole  attitude  is  a  call  upon 
ourselves.  She  is  here,  as  apparently  her  chief 
object,  to  create  our  personaHty.  And  thus  it  is  that 
she  has  placed  life,  its  success  or  failure,  so  largely 

214 


The  Something   Added 

in  our  own  hands.  If  anything  is  to  come  of  it, 
there  must  be  our  own  contribution.  As  Mme. 
Swetchine  has  it  :  "  Life  means  mainly  what  we 
put  into  it."  Our  own  day  is  Hving  largely  on  a 
mistake.  It  looks  for  its  well-being  in  a  something 
added,  but  it  is  the  wrong  something,  a  something 
from  the  wrong  direction.  What  people  seem 
everywhere  after  is  an  addition  from  the  outside, 
a  "more"  in  the  shape  of  money,  of  society,  of 
excitement,  amusement,  of  pleasures  so  called, 
pleasures  elaborately  manufactured.  The  additions 
from  this  quarter  of  late  have  been,  and  are, 
increasingly  abundant.  Every  week  brings  its  new 
sport,  its  new  fashion.  There  is  an  unparalleled 
cult  of  luxury.  Our  hotels,  our  steamships,  our 
railway  carriages  are  full  of  new  inventions  in 
comfort.  The  world  was  never  so  well  off.  Would 
anyone  say  that  with  all  this  there  has  been  a 
commensurate  increase  in  joyousness  ?  Never  since 
man  began  has  the  croak  of  the  pessimist,  the  wail 
of  the  discontented,  been  so  insistent.  And  the 
reason  is  not  far  to  seek.  For  all  this  is  simply  to 
begin  at  the  wrong  end.  The  something  added, 
that  is  of  real  consequence  here,  is  a  something  added 
to  ourselves,  a  something  that  comes  not  from 
without,  but  from  within ;  or  where  it  is  from 
without,  is  from  above  us,  and  not  in  the  things 
around  us.  It  is  in  the  development  of  character, 
in  an  increasing  clarity  of  vision,  in  an  insight  that 
goes  through  the  apparent  down  to  life's  bottom, 
fundamental  values,  that  we  reach  the  general 
satisfactions  ;  that  we  learn  to  say,  "  How  good  life 
is  !  "  To  have  cultivated  in  yourself  the  faculties 
of  faith,  of  hope  and  of  charity  ;   to  have  discovered 

215 


Faith's    Certainties 

the  enduring  joy  of  ordered  industry  ;  to  have  found 
the  beauty  of  things  simple  and  common  ;  to  have 
struck  on  the  magnificent  ideas  that  lurk  behind  the 
everyday  facts  ;  all  this  may  have  made  no  great 
difference  to  your  banking  account.  It  will  have 
made  all  the  difference  to  your  appreciation  of 
hfe. 

These  things  are  not  to  be  obtained  or  exchanged 
for  currency.  If  they  were,  and  if  a  jaded  world 
knew  what  they  brought  to  their  possessors,  there 
would  be  a  rush  for  them,  with  quotations  beyond  all 
that  the  Stock  Exchange  has  experience  of.  What 
their  value  would  be  is  happily  expressed  by  De 
Quincey  in  his  estimate  of  Goldsmith  :  "  He  had  a 
constitutional  gaiety  of  heart  ...  a  knack  of 
hoping,  which  knack  could  not  be  bought  with  Ormus 
and  with  Ind,  nor  hired  for  a  day  with  the  peacock 
throne  of  Delhi."  It  is  the  change  in  ourselves  that 
changes  the  world.  Every  outside  thing  takes  shape 
and  colour  from  the  idea  you  put  into  it.  You  make 
it  by  what  you  think  it.  It  is  a  fact  which  every 
cross  section  of  life  you  cut  into  reveals.  John 
Nelson,  the  Yorkshire  Methodist,  shut  into  a  stinking 
dungeon  for  preaching  the  gospel,  declared  that 
he  enjoyed  himself  there  more  than  had  he  been  in  a 
palace.  His  religious  faith  had  created  his  palace 
for  him.  Woolman,  the  American  Quaker,  on  one 
of  his  mission  journeys,  lost  at  night  in  a  wood,  with 
no  fire  and  with  rain  falling,  says  he  sat  under  a  tree, 
'*  and  had  a  very  sweet  meditation  on  the  love  of 
God."  His  soul  furnishes  his  fire  and  light.  The 
other  day  the  newspapers  had  the  account  of  a 
royal  princess  who,  forsaking  the  splendour  of  a 
Court,   had  chosen  the  career  of  a  hospital  nurse. 

216 


The    Something   Added 

And  she  would  have  no  exemptions.  She  would 
scrub  floors  with  the  rest.  Is  there  anything  bizarre 
or  quixotic  in  that  ?  We  find  nothing  quixotic  in  it. 
It  shows  an  entirely  sane  measurement  of  values  in 
one  who  had  tried  both  kinds.  The  princess  had 
found  what  luxury  and  pomp  and  artificiality  had 
to  offer  the  soul,  and  she  had  tried  what  simplicity 
and  comradeship  and  honest  toil  in  the  service  of 
others  had  to  offer  ;  and  she  had  no  doubt  as  to  the 
verdict. 

A  single  idea  of  this  sort,  if  we  can  get  it  well  into 
our  heads — and  nature  tries  so  hard  to  get  it  into  us — 
is  enough  to  turn  a  bad  world  into  a  good  one. 
Christ's  "  I  have  overcome  the  world  "  is  the  word 
not  for  Himself  only,  but  for  every  one  of  us.  The 
world,  in  its  hardness,  its  roughness,  its  million 
difficulties,  is  there  just  for  us  to  conquer. 

.     .     .     Life's  just  the  thing 

To  try  the  soul's  strength  on  ;    educe  the  man. 

Professor  Marshall,  in  his  "  Political  Economy," 
says  :  "  One  new  idea,  such  as  Bessemer's  chief 
invention,  adds  as  much  to  England's  productive 
power  as  the  labour  of  a  hundred  thousand  men." 
Wonderful,  indeed,  are  ideas  in  that  region  of  things. 
But  whether  Bessemer's  idea  could  make  either 
himself  or  his  hundred  thousand  men  happier  is 
another  question.  It  is  ideas  in  a  different  direction, 
native  to  another  side  of  the  soul,  that  are  needed  for 
that.  There  are  such  ideas,  and  they  are  not  less 
mighty  in  their  action  than  that  of  Bessemer. 

Take,  for  instance,  the  position  of  multitudes 
of  people  among  us  to-day,  who  find  themselves 
irked  and  depressed  by  an  uncongenial  society. 
They  find  in  themselves  an  innate  superiority  to  the 

217 


Faith  s    Certainties 

people  they  associate  with.  They  have  ideals  their 
companions  have  no  use  for  ;  a  refinement  which  is 
perpetually  wounded  by  their  coarseness.  Their 
soul's  deepest  note  finds  no  echo.  They  are  alone 
in  the  midst  of  numbers.  Perhaps  you  are  there  in 
that  position.  How  are  you  taking  it  ?  There 
are  two  ways.  You  may  take  it  as  an  evil  fate  which 
has  cast  you,  so  delicate  a  plant,  into  this  uncongenial 
soil.  But  suppose,  instead,  that  for  an  experiment 
you  took  on  the  idea  of  life  as  a  sphere  for  service 
where,  both  in  heaven  and  on  earth,  the  higher  give 
themselves  to  the  lower  ;  a  service  in  which  minister- 
ing spirits  from  the  heavens  occupy  themselves  here 
below  with  humble  souls ;  in  which  the  Christ 
"  pleases  not  Himself,"  but  lives  on  this  earth,  the 
friend  of  publicans  and  sinners.  Suppose  you  see 
in  every  gift  you  possess  the  Christ  claim  on  you  to 
use  it  in  His  way  ;  suppose  that  in  the  hours  when 
the  world's  rebuffs,  its  unkindness,  its  ingratitude 
strike  hardest  on  you,  you  find  in  the  midst  of  it  all 
the  way  of  retreat  into  His  spirit,  the  peace  of  that 
sure  refuge  !  In  this  choice  of  ideas  the  outward 
positions  are  exactly  the  same.  But  the  difference 
to  you,  how  vast  !  The  spiritual  idea,  if  you  choose 
that,  will  be,  so  far  as  you  are  concerned,  a  bigger 
one  than  Bessemer's.  The  one  turns  iron  into  steel ; 
this  other  turns  the  world  from  a  prison  house  to  the 
glorious  kingdom  of  God. 

In  every  region  of  things  life's  call  is  ever  the  same 
— always  for  the  something  added,  the  something 
you  can  add.  And  it  insists  on  your  adding  it  on  the 
peril  of  dead  failure  ;  insists  because  its  whole  object 
is  to  get  your  personality  in  motion,  to  develop  it 
by  using  it.     Take,  for  instance,  the  question  of  later 

218 


The    Something   Added 

age,  the  time  when  youth  and  passion  are  gone. 
There  are  men  who  find  what  remains  a  mere  vacuity, 
a  dreary  realm  of  prose.  James  Mill  found  it  so. 
Benjamin  Constant  puts  it  explicitly :  "  When 
the  age  of  passion  is  over,  what  else  can  you  desire 
except  to  escape  from  life  with  the  least  possible 
pain  ?  "  The  Frenchman  is  repeating  here,  almost 
in  the  same  language,  what  Anacreon  had  said  long 
ages  before.  One  wonders  what  a  man  like  Wesley 
would  have  said  to  talk  of  this  kind  ;  or  Channing, 
who  found  in  old  age  life  growing  ever  fuller,  ever 
happier  !  Walter  Pater,  in  "  Marcus  the  Epicurean," 
suggests  the  true  order  here,  where  in  Cornelius 
Fronto  he  pictures  an  old  man  who  constantly 
makes  up  for  the  decay  of  the  physical  "by  an 
added  grace  of  culture."  Only,  one  needs  more 
than  culture,  in  the  common  sense  of  that  term. 
For  it  is  precisely  when  the  heats  of  youth  are  over 
that  the  soul  finds  the  opening  for  its  own  greater 
activities.  Life's  business  there  is  like  gold  mining 
in  the  Klondike.  At  the  beginning  the  ore  is  found 
on  the  surface  ;  it  is  there  almost  for  the  picking 
up  ;  later  that  easy  processs  serves  no  longer.  The 
treasure  lies  deeper  down.  It  is  buried  out  of  sight, 
and  only  those  who  are  prepared  with  mining 
apparatus,  who  can  bore  and  drill  into  the  depths, 
can  hope  to  find  it.  But  there  is  more  there,  under- 
neath, than  ever  lay  on  the  surface.  The  men  of 
mid  age  or  old  age  who  exclaim  against  the  poverty 
of  life  are  simply  exhibiting  the  poverty  of  their  own 
souls.  They  are  on  the  top  of  a  gold  reef,  but  too  lazy 
to  develop  in  themselves  the  means  of  reaching  it. 

Religion  is  always  a  call  for  the  something  added  ; 
its  speciality  is  that  it  is  always  a  venture.     People 

219 


Faith ' s    Certainties 

wonder  sometimes  that  it  offers  no  more  positive 
proofs  ;  that  it  leaves  such  monstrous  wide  openings 
for  doubt ;  that  its  evidences  are  not  more  com- 
manding. Have  we  not  here  the  reason,  that  the 
soul's  vitality,  its  courage,  demands  a  risk  ;  that  it 
can  only  find  itself  in  dangers,  in  leaps  in  the  dark  ? 
Fichte  has  finely  put  this  aspect  of  it.  "  If,"  he  says, 
"  a  man  is  to  find  the  witness  for  the  soul,  immor- 
tality, and  God  at  all,  he  must  find  it  in  himself, 
and  in  the  spiritual  history  of  his  fellows.  He  must 
venture  in  freedom  the  belief  in  these  things,  and 
find  their  corroboration  in  the  contribution  which 
they  make  to  the  solution  of  the  mystery  of  life. 
One  must  venture  to  win  them.  One  must  continue 
to  venture  in  order  to  keep  them.  If  it  were  not  so 
they  would  not  be  objects  of  faith."  And  the 
freedom  here  demanded  is  a  free  action  of  the  will. 
It  is  interesting  on  this  point  to  note  how  J.  S.  Mill, 
brought  up  amongst  the  necessitarians,  is  compelled 
by  the  logic  of  life  towards  the  same  conclusion. 
Says  he  :  "  The  doctrine  of  free  will,  by  insisting 
on  a  truth  which  the  necessitarian  neglects,  the 
power  of  the  mind  to  co-operate  in  the  formation 
of  its  own  character,  has  given  to  its  adherents  a 
practical  feeling  much  nearer  to  the  truth  than  has 
generally  (I  believe)  existed  in  the  minds  of 
necessitarians."  The  possessions  of  faith  are  not 
for  the  man  who  sits  down  and  waits  to  be  convinced. 
They  are  rather  a  kingdom  that  "  suffereth  violence," 
where  "  the  violent  take  it  by  force." 

In  every  direction  it  is  the  something  added  that 
makes  the  difference.  Scenery  is  one  thing  or 
another,  according  to  the  soul  you  carry  to  it.  Have 
you  never  seen  the  Alps  in   England  ?     You  can 

220 


The   Something   Added 

see  them,  if  you  will,  in  all  their  glory— in  the  clouds. 
You  can  see  in  turn  Mont  Blanc,  Monte  Rosa,  the 
lovely  Weisshorn,  the  stupendous  Matterhorn.  Only 
a  little  imagination,  and  the  picture  is  there,  not 
even  to  be  improved  on  by  the  reality.  It  is  in  the 
idea  that  your  health  largely  lies.  You  can  frighten 
yourself  into  illness  ;  you  can  dare  yourself  into 
health.  Often  in  overwrought  moments  you  say, 
"  I  must  give  way."  And  faith  says,  ''  Courage, 
go  on  !  "  The  vital  force  in  you  hears  that  note, 
welcomes  it,  allies  itself  with  it,  and  the  two 
together  win  out.  Napoleon  walked  through  the 
plague-stricken  wards  at  Acre  to  show  there  was  no 
infection  for  the  man  who  did  not  fear  it.  Hospital 
nurses  know  that  there  is  their  greatest  safeguard. 
To  mean  to  win  is  always  half  the  victory. 

One  can  never  say  how  much,  here  on  earth,  is  yet 
to  be  added  to  the  soul's  life.  Henri  Perreyve,  that 
French  priest  of  the  beautiful  soul,  speaking  from 
his  experience,  held  that  five  or  six  pure  men,  living 
and  working  together,  of  one  heart  and  one  soul, 
with  one  object  in  view,  could  develop  a  common 
force  of  thought  and  feeling  which  reinforced  each 
separate  member  with  the  united  power  of  the  others. 
Strindberg  relates  of  a  French  nobleman  and  his  wife 
whom  he  knew  that  their  union  was  so  intimate  and  so 
perfect  that,  when  at  a  distance,  anything  happening 
to  the  one  became  known  to  the  other.  Were  it  a 
pain  or  a  joy,  it  was  immediately  shared.  There  are 
magnetisms,  currents  of  force  vibrating  in  the  ether 
of  the  spiritual  world,  deeper  and  more  subtle  than 
the  Hertzian  waves  of  wireless  telegraphy.  Who 
shall  say,  as  souls  develop  and  become  more  perfect 
receivers    and    transmitters,    what    new    deeps    of 

221 


Faith's    Certainties 

thought  and  feeling  will  here  be  opened  ?  And  all 
that  is  coming  to  man  here  makes  us  turn  with  a  new 
ardour  of  wonder  and  of  hope  towards  the  vast 
possibilities  of  death  ;  makes  us  ask  with  a  new 
eagerness  Browning's  question  : 

When  earth  breaks  up,  and  heaven  expands, 
How  will  the  change  strike  me  and  you 

In  the  house  not  made  with  hands  ? 


222 


XXII 

GRACE 

In  the  history,  one  may  say  the  romance  of  words, 
there  has  surely  been  no  more  singular  fortune  than 
that  which  has  befallen  the  word  "  grace."  In  its 
origin  it  stands  for  beauty,  sheer  beauty,  beauty  in 
all  its  forms.  But  who  now,  in  religion,  in  theology, 
in  the  common  pulpit  use,  thinks  of  it  in  that  sense  ? 
For  long  ages  past  theology  has  appropriated  this 
word,  and  in  the  handling  has  warped,  disfigured  and 
degraded  it.  One  may  say  that  it  is  the  most  ill-used 
word  in  the  language.  And  the  misuse  of  it  has  been  not 
only  a  treason  to  the  word,  but  a  treason  to  religion, 
and  to  humanity.  From  the  original  and  only  true 
meaning  of  it  as  expressing  all  that  is  bright,  winsome 
and  lovely,  it  has,  in  ecclesiastical  hands,  come  to 
stand  for  all  that  is  hard,  narrow,  terrifying,  and 
hideously  sectarian.  Ask  a  Scotchman,  brought  up  on 
the  Westminster  Catechism,  what  is  meant  by  "  the 
doctrines  of  grace,"  and  his  mind  goes  back  to  decrees 
of  predestination,  of  election,  of  reprobation,  of 
final  perseverance  ;  to  a  system  of  belief  which  makes 
humanity  the  subject  of  a  fate  which,  before  they 
were  born,  secured  for  a  favoured  number  of  them 
an  everlasting  salvation,  and  condemned  the  rest  to 
a  certain  damnation.  Ask  the  Catholic,  Roman  or 
Anglican,  what  is  meant  by  grace,  and  he  tells 
you    of   something    which   reaches    you    through    a 

223 


Faith^s    Certainties 

rigidly  protected  and  exclusive  system  of  sacraments. 
You  are  saved  from  wrath  by  baptism,  by  the 
Communion,  administered  to  you  by  a  priest.  The 
priest  is  thus  empowered  by  his  ordination.  This 
ordination  has  become  valid  by  being  received  at 
the  hands  of  a  bishop,  and  the  bishop's  power  is 
derived  from  an  unbroken  apostolic  succession. 
Grace,  in  this  view,  is  a  something  whose  communi- 
cation suggests  a  system  of  pipes,  as  though  it  were 
Standard  oil — the  strict  monopoly  of  a  caste.  On 
all  sides  of  the  Church  grace  has  been  construed  in 
terms  of  exclusion,  with  a  menace  behind  it,  like  a 
flash  of  light  on  a  thundercloud.  As  we  think  of  the 
way  in  which  this  high-born  word  has  been  mis- 
handled, tossed  about  as  the  war-cry  of  theologic 
controversy,  mouthed  as  the  cant  of  a  vulgar  religious 
phraseology  in  a  way  which  savours  of  Stiggins  and 
Chadband,  we  are  reminded  of  the  career  of  a 
racehorse  which,  from  the  first  position  in  the  equine 
world,  has  come  down  to  the  drawing  of  a  mudcart, 
and  finally  to  an  end  in  the  knacker's  yard. 

Theology  owes  to  this  word  a  great  reparation.  And 
this  can  only  be  given  by  a  cleansing  of  it  from  all  the 
soilures  that  ignorance,  narrowness  and  party  passion 
have  brought  upon  it,  and  by  a  restoration  of  it  to 
its  own  original  and  noble  meaning.  We  get  it  from 
the  Latin  gratia,  the  French  grace.  And  these  are 
translations  of  the  Greek  charts.  When,  in  the  New 
Testament,  the  Apostle  gives  the  solemn  benediction, 
*i  The  grace  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  be  with  you," 
he  uses  this  word  charts.  And  what  is  charts  ?  It 
stands,  we  say,  in  classic  Greek,  just  for  beauty, 
beauty  in  all  its  forms.  It  is  for  one  thing  external 
beauty,  and  that  specially  which  is  expressed  in  the 

224 


Grace 

human  body.  The  Greeks  had  a  worship  of  this 
embodied  beauty  in  the  three  graces,  the  Charites, 
Aglaia,  Euphrosyne,  Thaha,  the  symbols  of  human 
lovehness.  From  the  body  they  transferred  it  to 
the  mind  and  soul.  In  Plato's  "  Phaedrus,"  Socrates 
addresses  a  prayer  to  the  gods  :  "  Grant  me,"  he  says, 
"  beauty  in  the  inward  soul  and  may  the  outward  and 
inward  man  be  at  one."  In  the  "  Laches,"  grace  is 
conceived  as  a  harmony,  the  soul's  music.  "  And 
such  an  one  I  deem  to  be  the  true  musician,  attuned 
to  a  fairer  harmony  than  that  of  the  lyre,  or  any 
pleasant  instrument  of  music."  And  the  way  in 
which  this  grace  of  beauty  mounts  from  the  lower 
to  the  higher,  from  the  external  to  the  innermost 
and  noblest  expression,  is  given  us  in  that  magnificent 
passage  of  the  **  Symposium,"  where  love,  as  the 
following  of  the  true  beauty,  passes  from  stage  to 
stage  till  it  reaches  it  divinest  height.  "  And  the 
true  order  of  going  or  being  led  by  the  things  of 
love,  is  to  use  the  beauties  of  earth  as  steps  along 
which  he  mounts  upwards,  for  the  sake  of  that  other 
.beauty  .  .  .  passing  from  fair  forms  to  fair 
actions,  and  from  fair  actions  to  fair  ideas,  until 
from  fair  ideas  he  arrives  at  the  idea  of  absolute 
beauty,  and  at  last  knows  what  the  essence  of 
beauty  is." 

This,  then,  was  the  Greek  conception  of  grace. 
It  was  beauty,  showing  itself  in  loveliness  of  form, 
reaching  its  highest  physical  ideal  in  the  human  form, 
and  moulded  there,  in  its  truest  examples,  by  an 
inner  nobleness  of  soul.  And  this  beauty  was  divine  ; 
in  its  essence  it  was  life's  highest  expression  ;  its  true 
home  was  the  nature  and  beauty  of  God.  Has 
religion  bettered  it  ?     Grace  is  the  beauty  of  God  ; 

225 

16 


Faith's    Certainties 

the  beauty  of  His  character.  And  its  action  upon  us 
is  the  outgoing  of  that  beauty.  Grace  in  ourselves, 
reHgious  grace,  is  just  the  reflection  of  that  beauty 
in  our  own  heart  and  life.  And  if  we  take  our  doctrine 
of  grace  from  the  New  Testament,  instead  of  from 
the  systems  into  which  its  words  have  been  tortured, 
we  shall  find  nothing  there  that  is  contrary  to  this, 
its  first  high  meaning.  It  is  there  the  nature  of  God, 
flowing  out  upon  us,  freely  giving  itself,  winning  us 
by  the  exhibition  of  its  beauty,  and  producing  in  us, 
so  far  as  we  receive  it,  a  growing  approximation  to 
its  own  perfectness. 

How  is   it   that    we   have  got   this   fatal   schism 
between  the  idea  of  grace  of  form,  of  motion,  of  the 
amenities  of  life  ;    the  grace  we  find  in  a  flower,  in 
a  rhythmic  movement,  in  the  courtesy  of  gentilesse  ; 
and    the    grace  we  read   of  in  theologic    manuals  ? 
Passing  from  one  to  the  other  we  seem  to  have  gone 
to  a  new,  a  foreign  region  ;    a  region  where  every 
meaning  of  the  one  is  reversed  in  the  other.     Should 
there  be  this  schism  ?     The   more   we  look  at  the 
nature  of  things,  as  we  find  them  in  the  actuality 
of  life,  the  more  we  are  convinced  of  the  unnatural- 
ness,     of    the    artificiality,    that     has    caused    this 
separation.     God  does  not  work  in  different  ways 
in  different  spheres.     His  nature,  one  and  the  same 
in  itself,  is  one  and  the  same  in  all  the  regions  where 
His   action   is   revealed.     The  grace   of   beauty   we 
find  in  a  flower,  the  grace  of  free  lavish  giving  we 
discover  in  the  sunshine,  the  grace  of  cleansing  and 
refreshing  in  the  running  stream  ;    the  grace  we  find 
here  has  no  exclusivencss  about  it.     It  is,  if  we  may 
so  say,  democratic  all  through  ;   free  to  every  one  who 
will  see,  who  will  use,  who  will  enjoy.     The  flower 

226 


Grace 

gives  its  beauty,  the  sweetness  of  its  perfume,  to  the 
beggar  child  as  to  the  throned  prince.  It  gives  it 
perpetually  as  long  as  it  is  a  flower.  It  can  do  no 
other,  because  it  is  a  flower.  And  all  the  operations 
of  nature  are  on  the  same  footing.  Gravitation  treats 
us  all  in  one  way,  with  no  respect  of  persons.  We 
trust  it,  in  building  a  house,  in  climbing  a  hill,  in  our 
downsitting  and  in  our  uprising.  If  we  insult  it  by 
our  neglect  of  its  laws,  we  shall  pay  the  penalty. 
But  its  main  operation  is  all  for  our  security,  for  the 
stability  of  the  system  in  which  we  live  and  move. 

This  grace,  this  free  giving  in  nature — God's  action 
in  the  world — is,  however,  we  always  find,  while 
free  in  itself,  boundless  in  its  generosity,  in  a  certain 
way  conditioned.  It  comes  as  an  appeal  to  our- 
selves, an  appeal  we  may  reject.  Its  appeal  is  in  the 
sense  of  Bismarck's  motto.  Do  ut  des,  "  I  give  that 
you  may  give."  The  value  of  the  gift  is  conditioned 
by  the  value  in  ourselves.  For  it  to  be  of  use  to  us 
depends  on  our  power  and  willingness  of  response. 
It  meets  us  half-way ;  we  have  to  come  the  other 
half.  Your  flower  has  no  beauty  for  a  stone.  Its 
beauty  is  only  for  those  who  can  perceive  beauty. 
The  treasures  of  the  earth,  of  its  forests,  its  harvests, 
its  mines,  come  to  us  in  a  half-formed  condition  ;  the 
other  half,  which  makes  them  available,  which 
transforms  them  into  actual  wealth,  must  be  our 
own  contribution.  The  heavens  do  not  rain  baker's 
loaves  upon  us.  The  mines  do  not  present  us  with 
minted  sovereigns.  Nature's  grace  is  a  call  to  work. 
She  first  enriches  our  manhood  and  then  calls  upon 
it  to  assert  itself. 

And  here,  in  her  appeal,  and  in  the  way  man  has 
responded  to  it,  comes  in  nature's  doctrine  of  election, 

227 


Faith's    Certainties 

that  doctrine  which  theology  has  so  profoundly 
misjudged.  Her  elect  are  the  men  of  higher  endow- 
ment, of  a  keener  faculty  of  response,  who  have 
seen  further  and  deeper  than  their  fellows  into  her 
meaning,  who  first  have  learned  her  lesson.  Thus  it 
is  the  poet,  the  artist,  who  has  discovered  the  soul 
of  the  flower  ;  the  scientist  who  has  caught  the  secret 
of  her  movement,  of  her  chemistry,  her  biology  ; 
the  philosopher  who  has  penetrated  to  the  unity  that 
underlies  her  diversity ;  the  saint  who  has  entered 
into  the  grandeur  of  her  moral  and  spiritual  law. 
Here,  in  the  rise  of  her  great  souls,  is  her  selection, 
if  you  will,  her  fore-ordination.  But  observe  there 
is  no  exclusiveness,  no  preterition,  no  reprobation. 
These  elect  are  nowhere  elected  for  themselves. 
They  are  chosen  as  banders  on  of  the  good  gifts  to 
their  fellows.  No  man  invents,  discovers  a  thing 
for  his  profit  alone.  He  cannot  do  it  if  he  would. 
The  laws  of  his  own  nature  and  of  the  world  outside 
him  compel  him  to  be  a  purveyor.  His  discovery 
becomes  at  once  the  property  of  mankind.  A 
Newton,  a  Kepler,  explore  the  heavens,  and  the  new 
light  they  draw  thence  enlightens  the  world.  Watt 
and  Stephenson  find  the  uses  of  steam  as  a  force 
generator,  and  all  the  continents  are  covered  with 
railways.  Marconi  wins  the  secret  of  wireless 
telegraphy,  and  ships  at  sea  are  rescued  by  it  from 
the  devouring  fire  and  the  engulfing  wave.  And 
the  saint,  finding  in  his  soul  a  new  experience  of  God, 
a  glorious  access  of  spiritual  power,  can  keep  no 
movement  of  it  to  himself.  He  becomes  to  his 
fellows  a  centre  of  warmth  and  hght ;  the  hungry 
multitude  rushes  to  feed  upon  the  divine  bread  he 
dispenses. 

228 


Grace 

Do  we  suppose  that  this  rule,  which  obtains  every- 
where in  time,  takes  on  another  aspect  in  eternity  ? 
God  is  the  nature  of  things,  and  this  is  the  nature 
of  things.  And  the  grace  that  nature  reveals  is  a 
grace  that  is  free  to  all,  that  embraces  all  in  its 
bounty,  that  gives  more  largely  to  some  that  they 
may  pass  on  the  glorious  boon,  and  in  so  doing  add 
immeasurably  to  the  stock  of  the  common  human 
fellowship,  to  its  gratitude,  its  personal  devotion, 
its  sense  of  the  blessedness  of  giving  and  receiving. 
This  is  nature's  theology,  something  different  from 
that  of  the  schools.  Diderot  said  that  superstition 
has  been  a  greater  enemy  to  God  than  atheism.  And 
when  we  think  of  the  way  in  which  ecclesiasticism 
has  misrepresented  His  way  of  things — has  made 
His  grace  an  affair  of  cliques  and  castes,  has  shut  it 
up  into  an  iron  mechanism,  has  interpreted  it  as  an 
arbitrary  choice  of  some  and  the  wholesale  damnation 
of  others,  we  are  inclined  to  admit  the  encyclopaedist's 
contention.  We  may  learn  more  of  God  from  a 
flower  than  from  whole  libraries  of  this  kind  of 
theology. 

But,  it  may  be  asked,  is  there  not  another,  a 
darker  side  to  all  this  ?  What  of  the  evil  in  the 
world,  what  of  man's  selfishness  and  sin  ?  God 
forbid  we  should  minimise  that,  or  paint  it  in  any 
colours  than  its  own.  We  know  the  soundings  that 
have  been  made  into  the  deeps  of  that  mystery; 
what  theology  has  to  say,  what  evolution  has  to 
say.  Let  each  take  his  own  view  of  that  matter. 
We  are  not  here  discussing  it.  We  are  not  discussing 
causes,  but  something  else.  What  we  want  now  to 
point  out  is  that,  just  as  in  those  other  aspects  of 
life  we  have  been  dealing  with,  so  in  this  of  evil  and 

229 


Faith's    Certainties 

of  sin,  we  have  a  revelation  in  things,  in  nature, 
which  we  may  take  as  the  surest  revelation  of  the 
Personality  behind  them.  Is  there  not  a  grace  of 
nature  here,  which  may  be  taken  as  the  grace  of  God  ? 
Nature  in  the  presence  of  man's  evil  knows  no 
revenges,  harbours  no  ill-will.  How  does  she  deal 
with  his  blindness,  his  stupidity  ?  For  ages  her  great 
truths  have  lain  before  him,  waiting  for  recognition  ; 
truths  shown  in  the  rocks,  in  the  elements,  in  plant 
and  animal  life,  in  man's  own  history.  For  ages  he 
passes  them  by  ;  having  eyes  and  seeing  not,  and  ears 
and  hearing  not.  Does  she  complain  ;  dismiss  the 
scholar  as  a  dunce  ?  She  goes  on  in  her  own  way, 
just  patiently  day  by  day  setting  the  lesson  again 
before  his  eyes,  until  at  last  he  sees.  One  can  then 
almost  hear  her  whisper  :  *'  Ah  !  have  you  under- 
stood me  at  last  ?  "  And  for  man's  folly  and 
wickedness  she  has  no  other  way.  Her  sun  rises 
on  the  just  and  the  unjust ;  her  rains  descend  not  only 
on  the  good  but  on  the  unthankful  and  the  evil. 
And  in  proportion  as  men  catch  this  secret  and 
become  themselves  good,  they  act  in  precisely  the 
same  way  towards  ungoodness.  Towards  selfishness, 
ingratitude,  the  deepest  and  darkest  sins,  they  have 
no  other  way  of  action  than  that  of  being  good  and 
doing  good.  To  be  or  do  anything  else  than  that 
would  be  to  deny  their  own  nature.  And  they 
know  there  is  no  way  of  winning  to  goodness  but  by 
goodness.  It  is  a  law  in  all  spaces  in  the  universe, 
in  all  ages  of  its  eternity.  And  till  God  changes 
His  nature  there  is  and  can  be  no  other  way  for 
Him  in  His  dealing  with  sinners. 

When  we  have  restored  this  word  to  its  true  and 
pristine    meaning ;     when    we    have    carried     that 

30 


Grace 

meaning  into  our  personal  experience ;  in  a  word, 
when  we  have  tasted  and  felt  the  beauty  of 
God,  we  shall  find  here  a  faith  that  will  carry 
us  the  whole  length  of  the  journey.  We  shall 
put  this  interpretation  upon  the  whole  range  of 
circumstance,  of  the  things  that  happen  to  us.  It 
will  be  our  explanation  of  suffering  ;  of  the  sorrows 
that  at  times  tear  our  hearts.  It  is  the  business 
of  goodness  to  suffer ;  we  could  not  reach  the 
eternal  beauty — no,  nor  express  it — without  suffering. 
In  that  dark  recess  are  hid  treasures  of  the  spirit 
not  otherwise  to  be  come  at.  Christ  would  not  have 
been  Christ  without  it ;  it  was  His  Cross  that  showed 
us  God's  heart.  And  it  is  precisely  when  we  feel 
most  desolate  and  forsaken  that  He  is  nearest  to  us. 
The  pang  we  feel  has  hidden  in  it  His  most  intimate 
message. 

The  survey  we  have  made,  if  it  is  not  a  mistaken 
one,  shows  us  how  all  the  shades  of  meaning  to  which 
this  word,  in  its  passage  through  time,  has  linked 
itself,  point  to  one  and  the  same  thing.  Grace, 
at  its  fountain-head,  is  the  beauty  of  God,  the 
beauty  of  His  character.  Grace  in  us,  so  far  as  it 
shows  there,  is  the  reflection  of  that  beauty,  its 
implantation  and  growth  in  us.  And  the  beauty 
spreads  into  all  the  spheres  of  Hfe.  There  are  no 
really  fine  manners  that  do  not  come  from  a  beautiful 
soul.  The  peasant  who  has  that  is  a  truer  gentleman 
than  the  man  who,  without  it,  has  all  the  pohsh 
of  the  schools.  This  inner  beauty  flows  into  the 
face,  chisels  its  features  into  refinement,  gives 
melody  to  the  voice.  Have  you  noticed  how  a  deed 
of  heroism  has  the  same  effect  on  you  as  the  glory 
of  a  sunset,  or  a  strain  of  noble  music  ?     What  is 

-     231 


Faith^s    Certainties 

the  glow  of  feeling  there,  common  to  them  all,  but  a 
revelation  of  their  unity  of  origin  ?  It  will  be  the 
sense  of  this  unity  that,  in  the  coming  years,  will 
bring  art,  music,  science,  industry,  and  the  whole 
conduct  of  life  into  one  great  synthesis.  It  will  be 
this  unity  that  will  build  for  us  beautiful  cities,  that 
will  create  beautiful  bodies  for  beautiful  souls  ;  that 
will  subdue  coarseness  to  refinement ;  that  will 
raise  the  common  action  of  humanity  from  its  present 
discords  and  dissonances  into  its  predestined 
harmony.  With  all  this  men  will  reach  to  new 
perceptions  of  beauty  ;  a  finer  vision  will  disclose  finer 
forms  of  it.  In  the  end,  man  will  be  satisfied  with 
nothing  less  than  its  highest  form.  From  all  the 
infinite  charms  of  earth,  the  soul,  athirst  for  per- 
fection, will  still  lift  its  eyes  to  the  heavens  ;  will 
whisper  its  aspiration  :  "  Whom  have  I  in  heaven 
but  Thee,  and  there  is  none  upon  earth  that  I  desire 
beside  Thee  !  "  For  it  perceives  that  the  one 
beauty  that  alone  can  satisfy  it  is  the  beauty  of 
hohness — the  grace,  the  beauty  of  God. 


232 


XXIII 

OUR  POSSESSIONS 

We  are  all  possessors.  The  sense  of  ownership 
might  easily  be  added  to  the  original  five.  To  each 
one  of  us,  as  we  have  passed  through  life,  there  has 
floated  up,  out  of  the  sum  of  things,  a  certain  number 
of  objects,  more  or  less  tangible,  that  have  entered 
into  our  intimate  selves,  that  are  nearer  to  us  than 
to  anybody  else,  and  which  we  call  our  own.  Ever 
since  there  were  two  men  in  the  world  there  has  been 
the  difference — an  acute  one — between  meum  and 
tuum.  The  primitive  man  who  had  found  for 
himself  a  comfortable  cave,  felt  it  when  the  next 
man  came  along  and  looked  in.  But  the  huge 
question  has  since  arisen,  and  has  been  agitating  the 
world  ever  since,  as  to  what  sort  of  things  we  should 
possess,  and  how  we  should  possess  them.  There 
has  been  in  this  field  every  conceivable  kind  of 
experiment.  Our  own  age  has  produced  the  funniest 
experiments  of  all.  It  has  produced  the  multi- 
millionaire, who,  at  the  age  of  sixty  or  seventy,  when 
his  days  are  visibly  numbered,  goes  on  feverishly 
piling  up  his  millions.  At  the  end  of  his  journey 
he  is  carrying  all  this  luggage  !  His  possessions 
mean  that  he,  with  perhaps  five  years  to  live,  has 
food  resources  enough  to  secure  him  four  meals  a 
day  for  thousands  of  years ;  that  he  can  buy 
thousands   of  suits   of  clothes   he  can   never  wear, 

233 


Faith's   Certainties 

thousands  of  chairs  he  can  never  sit  on,  and  thousands 
of  beds  he  can  never  lie  on.  He  can  cover  the  country 
with  houses  and  palaces,  and  yet  can  only  occupy 
some  six  feet  of  space  in  a  corner  of  one  of  them. 
And  yet  with  all  these  impossibles  around  him;  with 
the  nature  of  things  openly  laughing  at  him,  he 
strives  after  ever  more  impossibles;  his  one  object 
apparently  being  to  make  this  joke  against  him  the 
more  palpable,  the  more  risible.  It  does  seem  rather 
absurd  I 

In  the  same  world,  breathing  the  same  air,  and 
assuredly  with  a  not  less  equipment  of  brains,  have 
been  people  whose  ideas  of  possession  were  so  vastly 
different.  They  had  as  vivid  a  sense  of  ownership  as 
these  others  and,  moreover,  had  quite  as  many 
things  to  own  ;  only  they  were  not  the  same  things, 
nor  held  in  the  same  way.  How  large  the  question 
is,  is  shown  by  this  largeness  of  difference.  Diogenes 
in  his  tub,  accosted  by  Alexander,  the  biggest  owner 
of  the  millionaire  sort  then  extant,  and  asked  by 
him  how  he  could  oblige  him,  replies,  "  By  getting 
out  of  my  sunshine  !  "  Which  of  the  two,  we  ask, 
was  the  saner,  the  philosopher  or  the  conqueror  ; 
which  of  them  was  the  true  possessor  ?  Or  were 
they  both  a  Httle  mad  ?  Certainly  the  world's 
biggest  men,  so  far,  have  inclined  to  the  Diogenes 
side  of  the  argument.  One  wonders  what  was 
possible  to  St.  Paul,  had  he  gone  into  politics,  or 
business,  or  high  finance  ?  He  had  about  as  fine  a 
brain  and  as  magnificent  a  will  as  has  ever  appeared 
in  this  world.  But  the  idea  of  accumulation  for 
its  own  sake  seems  never  to  have  entered  his  head. 
John  Wesley  was  one  of  the  most  commanding 
figures  of  the  eighteenth  century.     Macaulay  said  of 

234 


Our    Possessions 

him  that  he  had  the  administrative  qualities  of  a 
RicheHeu.  What  he  left  behind  him  in  personal 
property  was  a  Bible,  some  oddments  of  furniture, 
and  a  few  silver  spoons.  In  our  day  practical 
chemistry,  in  the  hands  of  first-class  minds,  is  one  of 
the  surest  ways  to  enormous  wealth.  Faraday, 
with  his  £300  a  year  at  the  Royal  Institution,  when 
invited  to  enter  on  this  lucrative  road,  replied  that 
he  could  not  afford  to  spend  time  in  money-making. 
And  there  is  another  story  in  history  of  a  wealthy 
young  man  meeting  another  young  man  who  had 
not  a  roof  of  his  own  to  put  his  head  under.  But 
the  rich  man  bowed  before  the  poor  one,  sought 
direction  of  him,  knowing  all  the  time  what  poverty 
his  own  riches  were,  as  compared  with  the  possessions 
of  this  other  ! 

Here,  then,  amongst  eminently  capable  men, 
on  both  sides  men  of  the  highest  ability,  amongst 
them  the  very  chiefs  of  our  race,  are  grave  and 
singular  differences.  On  the  one  side  the  modern 
men  who  have  made  and  are  making  millions.  On 
the  other  side,  numbering  also  some  moderns  among 
them,  are  these  others,  equally  eager  about  posses- 
sions and  counting  themselves  rich  in  them,  who  have 
such  other,  such  quite  contrary  notions  !  And  note 
that  the  difference  here  is  not,  as  a  hasty  judgment 
might  suppose,  one  between  visible  and  invisible 
holdings.  The  one  side,  not  less  than  the  other, 
beheves  in  the  visible.  The  difference  Hes  rather 
in  their  relation  to  it,  and  in  what  hes  behind  it,  and 
in  their  way  of  holding  on  to  both.  We  have  to-day 
both  ideals  before  us  ;  we  have  in  addition  the  long 
experience  of  the  race  to  go  upon  ;  all  the  growing 
knowledge  of  the  world  and  hfe  which  is  coming  to 

235 


Faith^s   Certainties 

us.     In  the  light  of  these  things  we  are  called  on  to 
take  our  own  line,  to  make  our  own  choice. 

All  men,  including  those  of  the  most  opposite 
schools,  are  agreed  as  to  the  primary  value,  the 
absolute  necessity,  in  fact,  of  material  possessions. 
We  all,  saints  and  ascetics  as  well  as  millionaires, 
must  live  before  we  can  live  well.  We  must  eat  and 
drink,  be  clothed  and  housed,  have  our  furniture, 
our  tools  and  working  instruments.  People  in  the 
north,  in  the  colder  latitudes,  need  more  of  these 
than  the  southerners,  those  for  whom  the  sun  does 
so  much.  The  northern  races  by  this  sheer  necessity 
have  been  driven  into  a  larger  acquisitiveness  than 
those  easier  circumstanced  folk  of  the  south  and 
east.  They  went  for  more  because  they  needed 
more.  And  their  faculties  in  this  direction  grew 
from  a  constant  exercise.  Transport  the  Pacific 
islander,  living  where  the  sun  is  the  one  heating 
apparatus,  where  a  cocoanut  feeds  him  and  a  loin 
cloth  clothes  him,  to  the  region  of  long  winters  and 
keen  frosts,  and  he  will  soon  change  his  habits,  and 
with  them  some  parts  of  his  moral  outlook.  In 
these  later  days  the  question  of  material  possessions 
has,  from  the  sheer  facts  of  the  case,  assumed  an 
aspect  undreamt  of  in  Palestine  and  the  year  i. 
The  world  has  become  peopled  with  hundreds  more 
of  hungry  millions.  We  are  awakening  to  the  fact 
that  we  have  been  using  up  our  common  possessions 
in  an  altogether  too  lavish  and  ruinous  way.  We 
are  cutting  down  our  forests,  exhausting  our  soils, 
burning  up  our  coal.  We  can  empty  a  coal  bed 
in  a  few  years  ;  has  it  occurred  to  us  to  ask  how 
long  it  would  take  to  grow  a  new  one  ?  We  have 
in  other  ways  come  closer  to  famine  than  most  of 

236 


Our    Possessions 

us  are  aware  of.  Through  the  manufacture  from 
the  atmosphere  of  nitrates  and  nitrites  by  newly 
discovered  processes  we  have  just  staved  off  a  very 
menacing  scarcity  by  the  near  exhaustion  of  the 
nitre  beds  of  ChiH.  We  are  slowly  waking  up  to 
the  necessity,  if  our  millions  are  to  go  with  full 
stomachs,  of  a  new  treatment  of  the  soil.  Prince 
Kropotkin,  in  his  "  Fields,  Factories  and  Work- 
shops," has  shown  us  how  we  may  stave  off  a  food 
famine  by  the  new  farming,  a  farming  which  experi- 
ment has  shown  possible,  and  which,  instead  of 
yielding  six  tons  of  grass  on  the  acre,  will  yield  from 
fifty  to  a  hundred  tons  of  various  vegetables  on  the 
same  space.  In  the  future  we  shall  live  largely 
on  the  earth's  hitherto  untapped  resources,  on  those 
secrets  of  fertility,  of  new  forces  which  science  has 
yet  to  wring  from  nature's  hidden  reserves.  In 
all  this  there  is  no  clash  of  the  moralities,  of  the 
life  ideals.  The  earth  is  the  human  estate — the 
only  thing,  so  far  as  at  present  appears,  it  has  to 
live  on. 

These  are  ownership  questions  of  the  whole  race, 
in  which  we  all  have  our  share.  But  granting  their 
demand,  and  starting  from  them  as  common  ground, 
we  have  now  to  consider  some  of  the  problems,  so 
manifold,  so  intricate,  which  affect  our  position 
and  conduct  as  individuals.  To  begin  with,  what 
do  we,  millionaires  or  wage-earners,  really  possess  ? 
How  much  can  any  of  us  really  call  our  own  !  The 
question  speedily  resolves  itself  into  this  other  : 
"  How  much  do  we  possess  of  what  we  possess  ?  " 
Narrowly  observed,  the  quantity  seems  to  diminish 
the  more  we  look  at  it.  If  there  is  one  thing  we 
seem  to  own,  and  be  master  of,  it  is  our  own  bodies. 

237 


Faith  s   Certainties 

And  yet  our  own  bodies  go  on  as  if  we — that  is  to 
say,  our  own  consciousness,  our  own  will — were 
not  there,  or  at  least,  were  of  very  small  account. 
The  billions  of  cells  which  compose  them  carry  on 
their  own  life,  are  born,  grow,  die,  wage,  some  of 
them,  their  internecine  wars,  with  smallest  thought 
of  you  and  me.  Have  you  anything  to  do  with 
the  growth  of  your  own  hair  ?  Does  your  heart 
or  lung  or  cerebellum  ever  consult  you  as  to  how 
it  shall  do  its  work  ?  Does  sleep  come  to  us  of  our 
will  or  of  its  own  ?  Did  you  wake  this  morning 
because  you  willed  to,  or  because  something  else 
willed  to  ?  Does  your  will  have  any  clearly  discerned 
hand  in  the  process  by  which  one  thought  succeeds 
another,  or  by  which  thought  emerges  from  the 
hinterland  of  the  sub-conscious  ?  Do  you  deter- 
mine how  long  you  are  going  to  live,  or  when  your 
heart  will  close  up  and  cease  its  beating  ?  The  body 
seems  our  nearest  possession,  and  how  little  do  we 
seem  to  possess  it  ! 

We  come  from  that  to  our  outside  holdings.  We 
stood  once  with  a  landed  proprietor  on  an  elevated 
position  on  his  estate.  Around  us  was  a  great 
stretch  of  country,  fields,  moorlands  with  swelling 
hills  bounding  the  horizon.  "  It  is  something," 
said  our  friend,  with  a  laugh,  "  to  look  round  on  all 
this,  as  far  as  your  eye  can  see,  and  to  feel  that  it 
is  all  one's  own  !  "  We  could  not  repress  the  reply  : 
"  When  nature  sketched  out  this  outline,  these 
valleys  and  hills,  millions  of  years  ago,  do  you  think 
she  had  you  particularly  in  mind ;  or  will  you 
be  particularly  in  her  account  in  the  other  milhons 
of  years  that  this  is  going  to  last  ?  "  This  kind  of 
ownership,  the  most  coveted  so  far  amongst  men, 

238 


Our    Possessions 

what  is  it  ?  An  affair  of  inheritance  or  purchase, 
which,  under  present  conditions,  gives  a  man  the 
power  to  say  "  Mine,"  to  put  up  notice  boards,  to 
exclude  his  fellows,  to  make  changes  and  alterations, 
to  create  solitudes  if  he  so  wills,  to  coerce  to  a  more 
or  less  degree  the  people  who  rent  or  till  the  soil 
under  him.  He  can  lord  it  for  a  while  in  this  fashion. 
Then  he  passes  ;  and  the  hills  and  the  fields  continue, 
quite  unconscious  of  his  coming  and  his  going.  And 
all  the  time  of  his  possession,  his  ownership,  reduced 
to  the  actual  fact,  what  is  it — his  sensations  about 
these  things  ;  his  thoughts  about  them  ?  And  often 
enough  these  have  been  of  a  very  poor,  meagre, 
unwholesome  sort,  of  no  good  to  himself  or  any- 
body else.  They  have  been  often  enough  a  mere 
lust  of  power,  a  love  of  mean  tyrannies,  hurtful  to 
society ;  and  which  society,  coming  rapidly  to  a 
sense  of  its  own  earlier  rights  here,  will  soon  sweep 
away. 

It  is,  after  all,  a  superficial  ownership,  and  even 
under  the  present  constitution  of  things  there  are 
such  deeper  ones  going.  "  I  possess  the  estate," 
says  the  man  of  the  purse.  "  And  I  possess  the 
landscape,"  says  the  poet.  He,  and  the  artist  with 
him,  own  its  beauty,  draw  its  revenue  of  high 
raptures  and  noble  inspirations,  in  a  degree 
impossible  to  the  mere  purse.  Compare  the  owning 
of  a  rare  edition  of  Homer  by  a  wealthy  but  ignorant 
book  collector,  with  that  of  the  scholar  who  knows 
it  by  heart.  We  enter  into  this,  the  truest  ownership, 
by  the  love  and  labour  of  the  mind.  We  take  away 
from  earth's  treasures  according  to  what  we  bring 
to  them.  A  fresh,  beautiful  soul  possessing  nothing 
in  the  capitalist  sense,  will  take  out  of  the  earth,  on 

239 


Faith's    Certainties 

any  summer  morning,  things  which  the  financial 
magnate  never  stumbles  on.  He  will  see  worms 
where  the  other  will  pick  up  diamonds.  Here  is  old 
Traherne,  the  penniless  parson  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  with  not  an  acre  of  his  own,  and  yet  enjoying 
the  earth  in  this  fashion  : — 

Long  time  before 
I  in  my  mother's  womb  was  born, 
A  God,  preparing,  did  this  glorious  store 
The  world  for  me  adorne. 
Into  this  Eden,  so  divine  and  fair, 
So  wide  and  bright,  I  come.  His  son  and  heir. 

Renan  felt  like  that,  when,  associating  himself  with 
Francis  of  Assisi,  with  no  invested  capital  in  the 
earth,  he  reaHsed,  with  the  saint,  that  he  "  enjoyed 
the  usufruct  of  the  whole,  having  nothing  and  yet 
possessing  all  things."  And  there  are  others  of  us, 
thank  God,  to-day,  who  are  possessors  of  this  wealth, 
and  would  not  part  with  it  for  any  other. 

All  possession,  when  you  dig  down  to  its  final  form, 
is  an  innermost  thing,  an  affair  of  our  thought  and 
feeling.  It  is  strange  that,  amid  all  the  hurry  of 
getting,  men  have  so  Httle  considered  that  fact.  If 
they  had,  they  would  have  worked  harder  than  they 
have  for  the  best  sort.  It  is  here  where  the  Pauls, 
the  Wesleys,  the  Faradays,  following  that  Other  we 
spoke  of,  have  proved  their  sanity.  Take  the 
different  sorts  of  possession,  looked  at  from  this 
inner  side.  On  the  one  hand,  here  is  the  million 
maker,  who  has  won  his  havings  by  relentless 
methods,  trampling  his  way  over  the  bodies  of 
weaker  men,  broken  by  his  keener  intellect,  his 
ruthless  will.  What  has  he  gained  ?  Numberless 
things  to  look  at  of  which  he  soon  tires  ;    all  those 

240 


Our    Possessions 

possibilities  we  mentioned,  of  eating  and  drinking, 
and  clothing  and  housing,  of  which  he  can  avail 
himself  so  little — unless  he  over-eats  and  over-drinks, 
for  which  nature  will  speedily  send  in  her  bill  of  costs. 
"  But  he  has  power!  "  And  what  is  that  as  an 
inward  possession  ?  What  are  these  victories 
yielding  him  for  his  private  thoughts  ?  Is  his 
knowledge  of  what  those  men  he  has  defeated  and 
crushed  feel  towards  him  :  their  envy,  their  hatred, 
their  thought  of  revenge,  their  mere  despair,  a 
wholesome,  satisfying  food  for  the  mind  ?  Is  the 
knowledge  of  other  men's  envy  a  good  thing  to  live 
on  ?  Is  the  flattery  which  waits  on  success,  the 
insincerity  of  which  an  acute  intellect  like  this  cannot 
help  penetrating,  a  wholesome  food  ?  Is  this  sort 
of  inner  revenue  worth  what  has  been  paid  for  it  ? 
On  a  mere  calculation  of  profit  and  loss,  does  the 
account  come  out  on  the  right  side  ?  The  fact  that 
nature  has  taken  care  that  it  comes  out  on  the  wrong 
side,  remains,  if  every  other  proof  were  lacking,  the 
surest  evidence  that  we  are  in  quite  another  sort 
of  universe,  under  quite  another  order  of  govern- 
ment from  that  which  the  materialist  tries  to  believe 
in.  And  the  evidence  for  that  becomes  irresistible 
when  we  look  into  those  possessions  which  the  other, 
the  Christ  order  of  life,  brings  with  it.  Let  a  man 
in  that  spirit  give  himself  to  duty,  devote  his  powers 
to  the  service  of  others,  not  for  dominion  over  them, 
but  as  a  helper  of  their  joy;  going  among  them,  like 
his  Lord,  "  as  one  that  serveth."  He,  too.  as  Hfe 
goes  on,  is  accumulating  his  possessions.  He  finds 
them  in  the  glad  faces  that  he  meets  ;  in  the  know- 
ledge that  his  influence  is  everywhere  an  uphfting, 
sorrow-Hghtening    influence.     And    with    this    there 

241 

16 


Faith's  Certainties 

has  been  going  on  in  him  a  process  of  refining,  of  the 
enriching  of  his  faculties,  a  culture  which  fills  him 
with  a  sense  of  all  that  is  beautiful,  of  all  that  is  holy, 
a  sense  which  makes  him  sure  of  the  spiritual  and 
sure  of  God. 

At  present  this  view  of  things  seems  under  a  cloud. 
The  capitahst  is  thought  more  of  than  the  spiritual 
leader.  The  voices  of  the  great  ones  of  the  past 
who  have  stood  for  the  inner  values  are  drowned 
under  the  cHnk  of  dollars.  M.  Faguet,  the  eminent 
French  critic,  is  of  opinion  that  under  the  existing 
reign  of  capitalism  the  world,  so  rich  in  its  material 
treasures,  in  its  scientific  triumphs,  is  losing  far 
more  than  it  has  gained — is  on  the  way  to  lose  all  the 
most  precious  treasures  of  the  spirit ;  its  religion, 
its  truest  art,  its  deepest  thought.  We  cannot  think 
so.  This  frenzied  rush  for  the  vulgarities  of  life 
will  not  last.  The  sanity  of  the  human  intellect 
must,  in  the  end,  reassert  itself.  Man  cannot 
permanently  feed  on  ashes,  or  on  the  bread  that 
perisheth.  The  prodigal  will  tire  of  his  swine 
trough.  His  finer  part  will  awake ;  will  know 
that  this  is  not  his  rest ;  and  from  that  far  country, 
and  from  those  ignoble  surroundings,  will  strike 
again  the  track  that  leads  homeward. 


242 


XXIV 
THE   SECRET   OF    REST 

Is  there  room  anywhere  in  our  crowded,  fevered 
Hfe,  for  such  a  thing  as  rest  ?  It  is  worth  talking 
about,  even  if  we  can  get  no  further.  There  are 
times  when  it  seems  the  most  beautiful  thing  in  the 
world,  if  only  we  could  reach  it.  "  Quiet  resting- 
places,"  "  peace,"  "  rest,"  "  quiet,"  "  holy  stillness," 
what  lovely  words  are  these  ;  how,  at  times,  they  fall 
upon  the  soul  as  melodies  from  heaven  !  How 
often  have  we  echoed  the  Psalmist's  cry,  "  Oh,  that 
I  had  wings  like  a  dove !  for  then  would  I  fly  away 
and  be  at  rest."  Only  we  ask,  almost  despairingly, 
''Would  the  wings  of  a  dove,  how  far  soever  they 
might  fly,  land  us  where  rest  is  ?  "  Lecky  tells  of 
a  German  graveyard  where  he  found  a  tomb  with 
this  inscription  :  "  I  will  arise,  O  Christ,  when  Thou 
callest  me  ;  but,  oh,  let  me  rest  awhile,  for  I  am 
very  weary  !  "  Have  we  not  sometimes  felt  like 
that  ?  We  meditate  at  times,  like  Hervey,  among 
the  tombs,  and  feel  the  peace  of  them.  What  once 
fevered  brows,  hearts  torn  with  cares  and  troubles, 
he  there !  But  the  fight  is  over ;  the  troubles 
somehow  adjusted  themselves.  The  faces  of  these 
dead  lost  all  their  wrinkles  when  the  last  moment 
came.  It  was  as  if  nature  said,  in  that  final  touch 
of  hers  :   "  Come,  you  are  not  hurt,  after  all !  " 

But  we  are  alive.  Is  there  any  rest  for  us  ?  It 
is  certainly  not  always  to    be   found   where    it    is 

243 


Faith's    Certainties 

commonly  sought.  We  hear  to-day  of  "  rest  cures," 
where  they  put  you  to  bed,  and  forbid  you  letters 
and  the  newspaper,  and  feed  you  up  like  the  Strass- 
burg  geese  for  the  pate  de  foie  gras.  We  will  not 
disparage  the  regime,  but  are  they  all  at  peace, 
think  you,  who  are  undergoing  it  ?  The  country 
village,  remote  from  trains,  far  from  the  madding 
crowd,  where  nothing  happens,  is  often  pictured 
for  us  as  a  blessed  antithesis  from  the  rush  of  cities. 
And  you  shall  find  there,  often  enough,  the  most 
restless,  discontented  souls  the  land  contains.  And 
there  are  sorts  of  rest  we  are  none  of  us  eager  for. 
Do  we  want  the  peace  of  that  Oxford  professor,  who 

Sought   refuge   from  the   brute 

In  the  blessed  Absolute  ! 

It  does  not  seem  very  satisfying.  We  know, 
too,  of  what  has  been  called  "  the  peace  of  defeat," 
the  apathy  of  the  man  who  has  tried  and  failed  ; 
who  says,  * '  I  have  done  my  best,  and  I  can  do  no  more. ' ' 
We  have  even  looked  wonderingly  at  the  alligators 
at  the  Zoo,  who  lie  there,  hour  after  hour,  without 
sign  or  sound  or  motion.  It  seems,  at  best,  existence 
on  rather  a  low  scale.  Then  there  is  that  sluggishness 
of  which  old  Pycroft  speaks  ;  of  people  "  who  are  less 
likely  to  go  wrong,  because  there  is  no  go  in  them  "  ; 
and  we  do  not  feel  drawn  to  it.  The  rest,  too,  of 
thinkers  who  have  reached  "  the  centre  of  indiffer- 
ence "  ;  who,  as  Leslie  Stephen  says,  "  have  reached 
a  point  when,  as  at  the  pole,  the  compass  points 
indifferently  to  every  quarter."  That  also  has 
little  attraction  for  us.  Nor  that  even  of  so  many 
modern  Catholics  who  have  given  up  thinking  for 
themselves  as  too  dangerous,  and  instead  acquiesce 
in  an  outside  and  a  mediaeval  thinking. 

244 


The    Secret    of   Rest 

Where,  then,  is  rest  to  be  found,  the  rest  we  are 
seeking  after  ?  We  are  apt  to  draw  our  images  here 
from  physical  conditions.  But  they  are  enormously 
delusive.  You  recline  in  your  easy  chair,  with  your 
feet  on  the  fender ;  or  are  stretched  comfortably  in 
your  bed  at  night,  and  apparently  have  reached  the 
thing  as  near  as  may  be.  And  yet  at  that  moment 
you  are  careering  round  with  the  earth  in  its 
prodigious  spin  on  its  axis  ;  are  racing  with  it  on  its 
many  millioned  journey  round  its  orbit ;  and  again 
are  joining  in  that  tremendous  voyage  through  space 
in  which  it  is  accompanying  the  sun  in  its  move 
towards  some  unknown  bourne  of  the  heavens.  It 
is  enough  to  keep  one  awake  to  think  of  it.  We  think 
of  the  majestic  rest  of  a  mountain  ;  of  Mont  Blanc 
slumbering  there  through  the  centuries  while  the 
generations  of  men  come  and  go  at  its  feet.  But 
Mont  Blanc  is  never  at  rest.  On  its  surface  the 
freezing  ice  is  perpetually  cracking  its  rocks  ;  working 
ruin  at  its  summit.  And  did  you  ever  think  of  the 
sort  of  rest  it  has  down  at  the  base  ?  Every  moment 
those  broad  foundations  carry  and  bear  the  thrust 
of  the  hundreds  of  millions  of  tons  that  are  reared 
upon  them.  It  is  the  rest  of  a  giant  who  bears, 
without  respite,  a  world  on  his  shoulders.  And  then 
the  atoms  of  which  it  is  composed.  The  latest 
investigations  show  us  the  atom,  in  the  words  of 
a  modern  scientist,  as  a  kind  of  "  planetary  system, 
consisting  of  a  nucleus  and  an  immense  host  of 
particles  or  electrons  revolving  round  it  at  vast 
speed."  The  visible  universe  is  clearly  the  wrong 
place  to  go  for  the  rest  of  quiescence.  As  Herbert 
Spencer,  in  one  of  his  latest  works,  puts  it  :  "  The 
conception    to    which    the    exploration    of   nature 

245 


Faith's   Certainties 

everywhere  tends  is  much  less  that  of  a  universe 
of  dead  matter  than  that  of  a  universe  everywhere 
ahve."  '*  Panta  rei  "  (everything  in  flux)  said  old 
Heraclitus.  "  Keep  moving,"  seems  the  cosmic 
order. 

If  our  rest  is  not  there,  where  then  ?  It  is  plainly, 
if  anywhere,  to  be  found  within,  in  a  condition  of  the 
soul.  And  we  doubt  if  the  thing,  as  realised,  can  be 
put  into  words.  It  requires  an  instrument  more 
delicate,  less  illusive,  than  language.  The  most  we 
can  do  is  to  circle  round  it,  in  illustrations  and 
approximations.  And  the  best  of  us  can  hardly 
speak  of  it  as  a  permanent  possession.  We  get  it, 
and  lose  it,  and  light  on  it  again.  But  there  is  a 
secret  of  it,  or  rather  secrets,  which  we  ought  to  know 
of.  That  man  is  nearest  it  who  finds  himself  most 
at  home  in  the  universe,  in  harmony  with  life  and  with 
all  its  laws.  One  likes  to  have  a  home  of  one's  own, 
but  the  domestic  hearth  is  by  no  means  always — in 
these  days  less  than  ever — a  rest  producer.  On  the 
other  hand,  there  have  been  men  whose  condition 
could  be  described  almost,  in  Homer's  words,  as 
"  aphretor,  athemistos,  anestios"  (without  kin,  without 
the  law,  without  a  hearth)  ;  men  prescribed,  with 
no  certain  dwelling  place,  far  from  family  and  from 
friends,  hunted  and  persecuted,  adrift  on  the  world's 
highway,  pushed  on  to  a  bourne  they  could  not  see, 
who,  nevertheless,  in  their  wanderings  have  found 
themselves  intensely  at  home  ;  who  in  the  midst  of 
incessant  conflicts  have  found  their  centre  of  peace. 
It  is,  of  course,  a  secret  of  faith,  a  spiritual  achieve- 
ment. But  do  not  let  us  suppose  that  it  has  been 
confined  to  any  one  faith.  Confucius,  surely,  was 
near  it  when  he  said  :   "  With  coarse  rice  to  eat,  with 

246 


The    Secret    of   Rest 

water  to  drink,  and  my  bended  arm  for  a  pillow,  I 
still  have  joy  in  the  midst  of  these  things."  And 
that  other  pagan,  Antoninus  Pius,  who,  on  the  last 
night  of  his  life,  when  the  tribune  came  for  the  watch- 
word of  the  night,  said  :  "  Mquanimitas."  Socrates, 
too,  calmly  discoursing  of  the  soul  before  drinking 
the  fatal  hemlock,  is  of  the  order  ;  the  order  of  those 
children  of  the  spirit,  who,  outside  our  own  com- 
munions, belonged  to  the  same  kingdom ;  who 
penetrated  the  same  mystery,  taught  of  the  same 
Eternal  Word. 

It  is  beautiful  to  notice  how,  apart  from  the  inward 
and  spiritual  teaching,  nature,  in  her  order,  her 
arrangements,  her  adaptations,  strives  to  open  to  us 
this  secret.  It  is  there  in  her  divine  ordinance  of 
work.  To  a  wholesomely  constituted  mind,  there  is 
never  a  more  complete  sense  of  rest  than  when  one  is 
in  the  fulness  of  activity.  The  picture  which  George 
Eliot  draws  of  Adam  Bede,  with  his  feet  in  dry 
shavings,  his  window  open  to  the  green  fields, 
singing  his  Methodist  hymn  as  he  drives  his  plane, 
is  the  picture  of  a  soul  at  rest — at  rest  in  toil.  The 
worker  here  is  like  a  great  fly-wheel,  which,  with  all 
its  whirl  of  movement  at  the  circumference,  has  a 
centre  of  complete  repose.  And  nature's  adaptations, 
her  laws  of  use  and  wont,  work  to  the  same  result. 
The  young  medical  student  who  faints  over  the 
first  operation  he  witnesses,  finds  afterwards  the 
artist's  joy  in  the  skilled  use  of  knife  and  scalpel.  In 
the  moment  of  great  catastrophes,  too,  nature  comes 
in  with  her  anodynes.  Whymper  has  recounted  how, 
after  his  slip  on  the  Matterhorn,  when  he  expected 
each  moment  to  be  his  last,  he  found  himself  calmly 
guessing  as  to  how  many  more  bumps  would  finish 

247 


Faith's   Certainties 

him.  A  correspondent  of  ours,  whose  home  in  South 
America  had  been  wrecked  by  an  earthquake,  and 
himself  and  his  family  flung  out  for  the  night  on  the 
mountain  side,  averred  that  he  had  never  in  his  life 
had  more  peaceful,  restful  thoughts,  a  more  vivid 
sense  of  God's  protecting  nearness  than  in  the  watches 
of  that  night.  Men  in  prison,  with  the  scaffold 
waiting  for  them  in  the  morning,  have  slept  soundly. 
Between  them  and  the  fact  before  them  their  soul 
had  found  its  accord  ;  often  a  completer  accord  than 
they  had  ever  known  before.  If  we  could  interrogate 
the  minds  of  men  faced  by  life's  grimmest  adventures, 
we  should  find  a  vast  testimony  to  the  friendliness 
they  found  there. 

The  inward  peace  of  the  instructed  soul  is,  one  may 
say,  never  one  of  inertia,  of  the  absence  of  burdens, 
of  difficulties.  It  is  rather  that  of  the  mountain 
which  placidly  bears  its  load  ;  of  the  keystone  of  the 
arch,  which  rests  in  its  place  under  the  thrust  of 
opposing  forces.  Equilibrium,  indeed,  which  is, 
in  the  material  world,  a  balance  of  forces,  follows, 
it  would  seem,  a  similar  law  in  the  mental  and  moral 
region.  Thus,  our  health  is  a  balance  between  the 
income  and  the  outflow  of  energy.  They  are 
opposites,  and  were  either  to  cease  their  interplay, 
we  should  speedily  be  on  the  wrong  side.  And  if  we 
are  taking  life  sanely,  we  shall  be  learning  to  educate 
the  will  to  maintain  a  similar  balance.  When  external 
circumstances  are  pressing  us  hardly,  we  bring  up,  as 
against  them,  our  reserves  of  the  internal.  Well 
for  us  if  they  are  strong  and  in  good  order  !  You 
have  had  heavy  losses  on  the  market ;  on  that  side 
you  are  suddenly  poorer.  How  fine,  how  strengthen- 
ing it  is,  in  such  an  hour,  to  remember  all  you  have 

248 


The    Secret    of   Rest 

left,  and  especially  what  is  left  of  life's  true  wealth  ! 
Are  you  firmly  planted  in  that  region  ?  It  is  the 
spiritualisation  of  your  attitude  to  nature  and  the 
world.  Have  you  entered  fully,  for  instance,  into 
her  laws  of  riches  and  poverty  ?  They  are  quite 
independent  of  the  market.  There  is  a  minor  one 
worth  noticing,  a  time  law.  Her  year  by  its  mere 
procession  fills  us  and  empties  us.  It  is  her  calendar 
of  vicissitudes.  In  November  and  December  we  are 
poor.  Like  the  trees  we  have  been  stripped  and 
bared.  We  are  nipped  in  light  and  sunshine,  in 
warmth  and  colour.  At  the  shortest  day  we  have 
reached  our  nadir.  But  then,  with  our  fortunes  at 
the  lowest,  our  pockets  begin  to  fill.  We  have 
touched  bottom  and  find  ourselves  on  the  upgrade. 
January  is  hopeful ;  February  is  glorious  with, 
promise.  Spring  comes  and  trade  is  flourishing  all 
round.  New  life,  new  hopes,  new  energies  every- 
where without  us  and  within  us.  In  the  summer 
we  are  millionaires.  Autumn  overflows,  but  with 
signs  that  the  boom  is  slackening.  We  must 
economise.  We  are  once  more  facing  the  dark. 
But  the  dark  has  ceased  to  frighten  us,  for  we  know 
its  range  and  term,  and  the  glories  that  are  to  follow. 
This  is  a  profit  and  loss  experience  which  comes  to  all 
of  us,  and  is  more  real  than  anything  on  the  Stock 
Exchange.  It  is  nature's  own  comment  on  our 
rush  for  mere  money  gains ;  a  comment  which  has 
some  sarcasm  in  it  !  'Tis  an  elementary  lesson, 
but  the  man  who  has  understood  even  this  has  won 
a  great  freedom.  He  can  weigh  his  spring  and  his 
summer  against  all  the  adversities  which  may  happen 
in  them,  and  be  sure  of  his  balance. 

We  win  our  rest,  we   say,    by  the   balancing   of 

249 


Faith's   Certainties 

opposites.  In  the  illustration  just  given,  we  have 
the  opposition  between  artificial  wealth  and  the 
real  wealth — nature's  wealth.  But  the  law  holds 
everywhere.  So  much  of  our  unrest  comes  from  our 
social  collisions.  People  quarrel,  and  are  miserable 
in  their  quarrels.  Join  two  fractious  humours  and 
you  have  a  conflagration.  But  you  may  live  happy 
with  the  hottest  tempered  companion  if  you  have 
become  yourself  versed  in  that  sweetest  of 
oppositions — the  spirit  of  peace.  We  remember  a 
conversation  with  a  working  man  who  had  an 
excellent  wife,  who  had,  however,  some  fire  in  her 
composition.  They  got  on  famously.  Asked  for 
his  recipe,  his  reply  was  :  "  When  missus  is  up,  I 
just  keep  on  saying  nowt  !  "  He  was  a  happy  man. 
The  noblest  of  all  oppositions  to  a  frowning  world — 
the  all  conquering  one — is  the  spirit  of  faith.  Bring 
it  to  bear  on  all  the  dread  possibilities  of  the  future, 
and  it  will  keep  you  in  good  cheer.  It  is  a  good 
saying  of  Edgar  Quinet,  born  of  much  trying 
experience,  "  The  unknown  very  often  saves  us. 
It  is  probable  that  what  one  fears  will  not  happen, 
and  that  we  find  blessings  we  never  thought  of." 
But  that  is  only  a  fragment  of  that  vaster  faith 
which  saintly  souls  have  reached,  souls  that  have 
penetrated  life  to  its  centre  and  found  God  there. 
Has  any  finer  prescription  for  inner  rest  been  given 
than  this  ?  It  is  from  the  Imitatio,  "  When  a  man 
Cometh  to  that  estate  that  he  seeketh  not  his  comfort 
from  any  creature,  then  first  doth  God  begin  to  be 
altogether  sweet  to  him.  Then  shall  he  be  con- 
tented with  whatsoever  doth  befall  him  in  this 
world.  Then  shall  he  neither  rejoice  in  great 
matters,    nor   be   sorrowful   in   small,    but    entirely 

250 


The    Secret    of   Rest 

and  confidently  committeth  himself  to  God,  who  is 
unto  him  all  in  all." 

Assuredly  there  is  the  secret  and  the  centre  of 
rest.  At  home  with  God,  we  are  at  home  in  His 
world,  in  His  universe.  No  part  in  it,  no  realities 
of  it,  will  be  to  us  strange  or  terrifying.  Under  all 
circumstances  we  shall  discern  His  laws,  which  are 
His  holy  will.  And  they  are  all  our  friends.  This 
central  rest,  which  He  invites  us  to,  is  the  ground 
and  condition  of  all  fine  achievement.  We  are  never 
at  our  best  if  we  permit  fear  or  ignoble  depression  to 
drain  away  our  force.  We  have  really  none  to  spare 
in  that  direction.  Goethe  has  a  true  saying  here. 
Speaking  of  the  story  of  Christ's  walking  on  the 
water  and  of  Peter's  failure  there,  he  says  :  "It 
expresses  the  noble  doctrine  that  man,  through  faith 
and  hearty  courage,  will  come  off  victor  in  the  most 
difficult  enterprises  ;  while  he  may  be  ruined  by  the 
least  paroxysm  of  doubt."  St.  Paul  had  this  secret. 
He  wrought  out  his  wonderful  apostolate  because  he 
had  "  learned  in  whatsoever  state  he  was  therewith  to 
be  content."  Why  not  ?  He  was  full  of  the  Divine 
presence,  and  his  universe  was  full  of  it  too.  The 
wilderness  he  found  there,  the  prisons,  the  hungers 
and  thirsts,  the  bloody  death  at  the  end,  could  not 
hide  from  him,  or  dim  the  glorious  vision.  When 
that  fight  shines  on  us  and  in  us,  we  shall  meet 
whatever  befalls  as  cheerily  as  he. 


251 


XXV 

THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

It  is  an  ecclesiastical  phrase,  half  Latin,  meaning, 
of  course,  in  modern  English,  "  the  care  of  souls." 
Caring  may  be  said  to  involve  curing  ;  but  it  goes  a 
great  deal  further.  There  has,  perhaps,  been  too 
much  soul  "  curing  "  and  too  little  caring ;  too 
much  drugging  and  too  little  feeding.  We  are 
reminded  here  of  Mrs.  Poyser's  famous  dictum 
concerning  the  two  clergymen  she  had  sat  under. 
"  Mr.  Irvine  was  like  a  good  meal  o'  victual,  you 
were  the  better  for  him  without  thinking  on  it ; 
and  Mr.  Ryde  was  like  a  dose  of  physic,  he  gripped 
you  and  worrited  you,  and,  after  all,  he  left  you 
much  the  same."  Bishop  Creighton  seems  to  have 
had  the  same  idea  in  that  terrible  witticism  which 
he  perpetrated  at  the  expense  of  his  ritualistic  clergy. 
In  an  interview  about  incense,  one  of  them  said, 
**  But,  my  lord,  you  must  remember  we  have  a  cure 
of  souls."  To  which  he  replied,  "  And  you  think 
that  souls,  like  herrings,  cannot  be  cured  without 
smoke  ?  " 

Our  readers,  we  fear,  will  accuse  us  of  tumbhng 
into  a  great  theme  in  a  rather  haphazard  and 
irreverent  way.  Assuredly  it  is  a  great  theme, 
worthy   of   all   our   seriousness.     That   the   care    of 

252 


The    Cure    of   Souls 

souls  should,  amongst  practically  all  sections  of  the 
human  race,  have  been  made  a  special  vocation,  for 
which  men,  withdrawn  from  all  other  industries, 
specially  equipped,  prepared  by  long  training,  and 
supposed  to  be  possessed  of  more  than  ordinary 
gift  and  character,  should  devote  their  whole  hfe, 
maintained  meanwhile  by  the  labours  and  offerings 
of  their  fellows,  is,  when  one  comes  to  think  of  it, 
a  wonderful  and  deeply  suggestive  thing.  That  there 
should  be  men  gaining  their  living  by  looking  after 
our  bodies — seeing  what  ailing  bodies  they  are — is 
not  in  itself  remarkable.  But  that  every  nation  and 
every  age  should  have  had  its  professional  soul 
carers,  fed  and  housed  at  the  general  expense,  this  in 
itself  is  surely  noteworthy.  Whether  we  think  of 
the  Pope  in  Rome,  living  in  a  palace  of  some  four 
thousand  rooms,  and  with  the  revenues  of  a  world 
flowing  daily  into  its  exchequer  ;  or  of  those  weavers 
in  the  "  Auld  Licht  Idylls,"  who  straitened  their 
eating  and  added  to  their  work-hours  in  order  to 
weave  a  maintenance  for  the  minister  of  their  choice, 
the  theme  is  sufficiently  wonderful.  That,  in  spite 
of  all  that  has  been  said  to  the  contrary,  all  the 
indictments  against  this  view  of  things,  all  the 
ridicule  of  it,  man  continues  so  obstinately  religious  ; 
persists  in  the  idea  that  he  has  a  soul  in  him  worth 
looking  after,  in  need  of  being  cured,  cared  for,  and 
saved — have  you  not  here  a  matter  to  ponder  over  ? 
Yes,  spite  of  all,  the  spiritual  world  presses  upon 
man.  Let  him  sink  himself  deep  as  he  may  in 
material  things,  it  reaches  him  there.  Let  him  cry 
out  at  it,  beheve  its  forms  to  be  grotesque,  impossible. 
No  matter.  It  may  change  its  forms,  but  it  is  always 
there;     mysterious,    fascinating,    maddening    some- 

253 


Faith^s    Certainties 

times  in  the  bewilderment  of  its  questions,  but  there 
as  his  closest  affinity,  the  formative  force  of  his  life. 
The  cure,  or  care  of  souls,  considered  as  a  separate 
vocation,  seems  to  have  been  as  old  as  humanity 
itself.  In  earliest  times,  amid  savage  races,  it  was 
combined  generally  with  the  care  of  bodies.  The 
medicine-man,  who  stood  as  mediator  between  the 
tribe  and  the  unseen  powers,  had  to  protect  it  against 
bodily  as  well  as  spiritual  evils.  His  "  magic  "  was 
held  to  be  good  against  liver  complaints  as  well  as 
against  the  deeper  troubles  of  the  mind.  He  held 
the  place  of  those  quack  doctors  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  on  whom  Lady  Mary  Montagu  has  this 
biting  comment  :  "  The  same  money  which,  three 
hundred  years  ago,  was  given  for  the  health  of  the 
soul  is  now  given  for  the  health  of  the  body,  and  by 
the  same  sort  of  people — women  and  half-witted 
men."  There  is  much  of  that  going  on  to-day  as 
well  as  in  the  eighteenth  century.  Brahminism, 
Buddhism,  Mohammedanism,  have  all  their  separated 
caste,  their  clergy.  Christianity,  from  its  beginning, 
has  had  its  ordained  ministry.  The  greatest  of  the 
apostles  worked  for  his  Hving  ;  but  his  noble  pride 
in  that  matter  did  not  prevent  him  from  maintaining 
in  principle  that  the  Gospel  minister  should  live  of 
the  Gospel.  Deeply  interesting  is  it  to  watch  the 
evolution  there.  The  Didache,  that  precious  docu- 
ment discovered  in  our  own  day,  gives  us  a  picture  of 
the  ministry  which,  at  the  beginning  of  the  second 
century,  had  succeeded  to  the  apostolic  order.  We 
see  there  the  evangelists  or  missioners,  inspired 
messengers  of  the  faith,  going  from  place  to  place, 
forbidden  to  remain  for  other  than  the  briefest  space 
at  any  one  abode,  under  strictest  rules  as  to  receiving 

254 


The    Cure    of   Souls 

money  or  gifts — a  body  of  travelling  preachers, 
teaching,  baptizing,  administering  the  sacrament,  a 
veritable  order  of  spirit  and  fire.  But  the  churches 
grew  in  number,  and  these  wandering  prophets  died 
off,  with  no  successors.  The  work  of  preaching  and 
administering  fell,  consequently,  on  the  local  leaders. 
The  duties  fell  upon  the  leading  elder,  the 
"  episcopus  "  or  "  overseer."  Originally  a  layman, 
the  ever  increasing  duties  compel  his  definite  separa- 
tion to  the  work.  So  get  we  our  Christian  ministry, 
more  and  more  carefully  ranked  in  position  and 
function. 

It  was  a  fateful  development,  full  of  good  and  full 
of  evil.  The  clerical  order  has  produced  some  of 
the  noblest  spirits  that  have  ever  blessed  the  world. 
But  the  devil  has  taken  a  monstrous  toll  of  it.  So 
vast  are  its  temptations,  and  so  queer  a  thing  is 
human  nature.  Wherever  men  climb  the  heights 
we  have  a  percentage  of  catastrophes.  What  the 
temptations  have  been,  and  how  men  have  succumbed 
to  them,  is  shown  to  us  as  early  as  Jerome's  time, 
where  he  describes  the  Roman  clergy  as  "  flattering 
rich  matrons,  spending  the  day  in  calls  at  grand 
houses,  admiring  a  cushion  or  a  handkerchief  by  way 
of  obtaining  it  as  a  present,  walking  abroad  with  hair 
fashionably  arranged  and  rings  glittering  on  their 
fingers ;  also  of  monks  worming  their  way  into 
favour  with  the  rich,  and  pretending  to  fast,  while 
they  repaid  themselves  with  nightly  revelry."  Right 
through  the  Middle  Ages  the  game  goes  on,  with 
unspeakable  stories  of  popes  and  prelates.  In  the 
tenth  century  we  read  of  priests  offering  mock 
masses  in  which  they  sang  obscene  songs,  and 
possessing  a  blank  infidelity,  till  at  the  Renaissance 

255 


Faith^s    Certainties 

the  pitch  is  reached  which  Villari  describes,  "  when 
it  seemed  as  though  the  Papacy  desired  to  extirpate 
all  religious  feeling  from  the  mind  of  man,  and  to 
overthrow  for  ever  every  basis  of  morality." 

The  Reformation  wrought  a  sweeping  change  in 
this  order  of  things,  a  change,  let  us  remember,  not 
less  potent  in  Romanism  than  in  Protestantism  itself. 
Yet  in  Protestantism,  our  own  English  brand  of  it, 
what  queer  things  stand  in  the  clerical  record  !  We 
read  of  a  Bishop  of  Durham,  in  Charles  the  Second's 
time,  obtaining  his  see  by  a  present  of  £5,000  to  Nell 
Gwynne.  Closer  to  our  own  day  we  read,  in  the 
Life  of  Bentham,  of  Lord  Bristol,  Bishop  of  Derry, 
whom  Bentham  met  at  Bowood,  the  seat  of  Lord 
Lansdowne.  He  says  of  the  Bishop  :  "  He  did  not 
believe  in  revealed  religion  ;  was  very  tolerant  of 
the  judgment  of  others,  &c.  The  revenue  of  the 
bishopric  was  £7,200,  with  the  patronage  of  forty- 
three  advowsons,  none  less  than  £250  a  year.  They 
paid  their  curates  £50,  and  were  non-resident."  A 
singular  picture  this  of  a  bishop  who  believed 
nothing,  and  who  administered  a  diocese  of  well-paid 
clergy  who  did  nothing  ! 

Certainly  the  cure  of  souls  in  this  sense  of  it  has 
produced  some  queer  curators.  The  clerical  spirit 
has  often  been  dangerous  to  liberty.  We  remember 
Gambetta's  "  le  clericalisme  :  voild  I'ennemi."  And 
yet  on  this  soil  what  noble  spirits  have  grown ! 
Against  the  bad,  the  ignorant,  the  fanatical,  what 
flaming  souls  of  light  and  holiness  ;  what  interpreters 
of  God  and  man ;  what  martyr  spirits,  what 
forwarders  of  all  goodness  ;  what  incarnations  of  all 
that  is  beautiful  in  hving  !  Against  Jerome's 
degenerates  we  put  Ignatius  and  Polycarp  ;   we  think 

256 


The    Cure    of    Souls 

of  an  Origen,  a  Cyprian,  a  Basil,  a  Chrysostom. 
Mediaevalism,  side  by  side  with  its  evil  livers,  offers 
us  an  Alcuin,  a  Bernard ;  gives  us  those  Irish 
priests  who  evangehsed  Germany ;  gives  us  St. 
Francis,  of  whom  Renan  said  that  his  Ufe  made  the 
historic  Jesus  possible  to  him.  Over  against  the 
Renaissance  priestly  infidels  stand  a  Luther,  a 
Melanchthon,  a  John  Knox.  What  a  treasury  of 
holy  service  has  reformed  Romanism  offered  in  a 
Fenelon,  a  Vincent  de  Paul,  in  a  Vianney,  that 
marvellous  priest  of  the  French  Second  Empire. 
Against  an  Anghcan  Crewe  and  Bristol  stand  an 
Anglican  Ken,  an  Andrewes,  a  Jeremy  Taylor.  What 
has  been  the  worth  to  England  of  a  Richard  Baxter, 
whose  "  Reformed  Pastor,"  a  book  that  ministers 
should  read  every  year,  is  the  transcript  of  his  own 
pastoral  life  ;  of  a  Wesley,  with  the  world  as  his 
parish  !  What  does  America  owe  to  Edwards,  to 
Beecher  !  And  in  our  modern  civilisation  is  there, 
with  all  its  defects,  any  solider  force  for  goodness 
than  the  ministry  of  to-day  ?  The  cure  of  souls, 
taken  as  a  vocation,  may  witness  enormous  changes 
in  the  future.  Tyrrell,  after  his  long  experience  of  the 
priesthood,  augurs  "  the  final  disappearance  of  the 
priest  class,  and  the  adoption  of  a  system  of  unpaid 
ministration."  Possibly.  What  we  are  sure  of 
is  that,  amid  all  changes,  all  progress  of  the  future, 
there  will  never  be  wanting  elect  souls,  men  with  a 
genius  for  hoHness  as  other  men  have  a  genius  for 
science  or  music,  lives  dedicated  to  the  spiritual,  to 
whom  the  world  will  look  for  its  best  examples,  its 
highest  inspiration. 

But  surely  "  the  cure  of  souls  "  has  a  wider  signifi- 
cance  than   any  that   can   be   appHed   to   a   select 

257 

17 


Faith^s    Certainties 

separated  class.  Are  we  not  all  in  the  business  ? 
The  fact  is  we  none  of  us  can  do  anything  that  does 
not  tell  upon  it.  Never  was  there  a  time  in  which 
there  was  such  intimacy,  such  close  interaction  of 
spirit  as  to-day.  Never  was  the  heart,  the  mind  of 
man  so  exposed,  so  open  to  the  winds  and  waves  of 
varied  influence.  Our  souls  crowd  each  other. 
The  railway,  the  telegraph,  the  newspaper,  the 
incesssant  movement  of  men,  the  rise  and  spread  of 
new  ideas— all  this  is  upon  each  of  us  a  constant 
pressure.  Every  man  of  us  is  a  target  for  all  the 
rest.  We  cannot  stir  or  speak  but  we  set  things 
going  that  thrill  through  the  world.  We  are  all 
at  work  on  each  other,  curing  or  killing.  To-day 
the  Government  is  a  Church.  Its  schemes  for 
housing,  for  education,  for  the  extirpation  of  poverty, 
have  a  spiritual  potency  wider  in  effect  than  the 
decrees  of  popes  and  councils.  What  a  day  will 
that  be  when  government  shall  be  consciously  a 
religious  act,  and  not  a  scramble  for  votes  and  oflice, 
when  our  legislators  shall  beheve  with  Pym  that 
"  a  man's  religion  should  show  itself  in  having  the 
country  well  governed  "  ;  when  our  militarists  shall 
believe,  with  Ruskin,  that  "  we  should  bring  up  our 
peasants  to  a  book  exercise  instead  of  a  bayonet 
exercise  ;  organise,  drill,  maintain  with  pay,  armies 
of  thinkers  instead  of  armies  of  stabbers  "  ;  when 
Government  shall  make  itself  a  veritable  cure  of  souls, 
and,  as  essential  to  that,  a  cure  of  bodies,  a  cure  of 
conditions  ! 

Certainly,  in  these  directions,  Government,  the 
common  action  of  the  community,  the  thinking  and 
acting  of  its  best  minds,  can  do  much,  how  much  we 
are  only  just  beginning  to  understand.     But  it  cannot 

258 


The  Cure   of  Souls 

do  all,  no,  nor  half.  The  real  cure  of  souls  rests  finally 
with  ourselves.  And  nature,  so  far  as  we  can  see, 
has  put  us  here  mainly  for  that  business.  Her 
seeming  indifference  to  our  outward  fortunes,  the 
sufferings,  the  deaths  she  inflicts  ;  her  permission  of 
every  kind  of  disaster,  of  misfortune,  surely  point 
mainly  to  this.  We  are  here  to  be  knocked,  battered, 
bruised,  into  something  greater  than  we  are.  We 
are  here  to  be  made  as  radium  is  made.  We  begin, 
as  radium  does,  as  a  mere  rock  formation,  a  rock  that 
contains  something  precious.  We  are  put  through 
process  after  process.  The  rock  may  cry  out  under 
that  cruel  machinery,  but  it  pounds  and  pounds  away 
until  something  emerges  greater  than  rock,  something 
whose  exquisite  fineness  and  force  of  quality  accom- 
plish the  miracles  we  see.  Ah  !  if  those  struggles 
and  sorrows  we  have  had  lift  us  to  some  new 
quality  of  being  !  For  it  is  the  soul's  quality  that 
is  everything.  Operari  sequilur  esse,  doing  follows 
being,  is  according  to  being.  When  we  have  reached 
that  better  stage  we  are  constantly  doing  things, 
good  things,  by  simply  being  what  we  are.  A  good 
nature  carries  in  it  a  glorious  contagion  of  goodness. 
It  flows  out  upon  others  as  a  healing  power. 

One  wonders  whether  this  cure  of  the  soul,  as  an 
individual  matter,  is  flourishing  to-day  ?  Whether, 
in  our  absorption  in  affairs,  we  are  putting  them  to 
their  chief  purpose,  the  distillation  from  them  of  the 
higher  spiritual  products  ?  Is  prayer  going  out  of 
fashion  ?  There  is  not  so  much  of  it  as  there  used 
to  be.  And  what  of  self-examination,  that  steady, 
clear  eyed,  unrelenting  scrutiny  of  ourselves,  as  we 
lie  in  our  beds  when  the  day  is  over  ;  the  passing  of 
our  life  before  the  clear  light  of  the  ideal,  to  see  how 

259 


Faith^s   Certainties 

our  words,  deeds  and  inmost  thoughts  look  in  that 
penetrating  radiance  ?  There  is  no  getting  on 
without  that.  It  should  be  as  regular,  as  daily  a 
habit  as  that  of  washing  and  dressing.  It  is  as 
essential  to  the  higher  harmony  as  is  the  practice  of 
the  artist  on  piano  or  violin.  It  is  thus  that  we 
keep  up  the  fight  with  ourselves,  that  we  detect  and 
take  note  of  those  new,  silent  growths  within  that, 
unwatched,  may  become  a  hideous,  enslaving  power. 
It  is  only  thus  that  we  can  keep  in  tune  with  the 
infinite.  This  does  not  mean  a  timid  morbidity,  as 
of  malades  imaginaires  with  their  finger  perpetually 
on  the  pulse.  It  is  the  gardener's  care,  who  weeds  his 
plot,  who  keeps  his  soil  ready  for  the  choicest  cultures. 
This  cure  of  the  soul  for  ourselves  will  react 
happily  on  our  cure  of  the  soul  for  others.  Our 
intercourse  with  our  fellows  will  be  everywhere  a 
wholesome  healing  intercourse.  When  we  have 
abolished  the  war  with  swords  and  bullets,  another 
abolition  awaits  us,  that  of  the  war  with  poisoned 
swords,  with  those  subtler,  deadlier  weapons  of 
offence,  the  weapons  of  haughtiness,  of  indifference, 
of  the  mind's  cruelty,  with  which  untutored  spirits 
maim  and  sting  and  crush  the  dehcate  natures  around 
them.  Are  there  not  sorrows  enough,  and  wounds 
enough,  that  we  should  fling  arrows  and  bombs 
into  the  bleeding  mass,  that  we  should  make  any 
burdened  brother  sorrier  for  our  presence  beside 
him  ?  We  can  gather  no  religious  statistics  on  this 
head  ;  but  the  growth  of  real  religion  has  no  surer 
mark  than  the  development  among  us  of  that  care 
of  our  own  soul  and  of  others  which  seeks  our  own 
good  everywhere  in  the  good  of  our  fellows. 

The  cure  of  souls.     Where,  after  all  and  above  all, 

260 


The   Cure   of  Souls 

does  that  lie  ?  It  is  finally  God's  business,  His  chief 
business  with  us.  It  is  a  hopeful,  a  mind-enlarging 
study,  to  note  how  He  manages  it.  When  we  spoke 
of  nature's  seeming  indifference  to  bodily  suffering 
we  were  thinking  really  of  God's  way  here.  Plainly, 
He  thinks  more  of  the  soul  than  of  the  body.  He 
pursues  all  ways  and  dares  all  risks  in  producing, 
in  developing  that.  Seneca,  in  his  De  Providentia, 
argues  that  suffering  is  the  divine  method  of 
perfecting  character.  It  is  well  to  remember  that 
when  we  do  suffer.  And  be  sure  that  God's 
cure  of  souls  is  no  sectarian,  no  partisan 
affair.  The  coming  of  Christ  meant  no  bar 
of  exclusion  to  the  non-Christian  races.  His 
unsearchable  riches  were  no  declaration  of  the  outer 
world's  bankruptcy.  The  early  Fathers,  Justin 
Martyr,  Origen,  Clement  of  Alexandria,  delighted  to 
think  of  Him  as  the  "  Light  that  hghteth  every  man 
that  cometh  into  the  world."  One  finds  the  most 
deeply  Christian  minds  at  one  here.  In  that  finest 
fruit  of  mediaeval  mysticism,  the  "  Book  of  the 
Nine  Rocks,"  we  read  :  "  When  God  finds  a  good 
Jew,  a  Mohammedan  of  pure  life,  He  feels  a  thrill  of 
love  and  infinite  pity  for  him,  no  matter  in  what  part 
of  the  earth  he  Hves,  and  God  will  find  some  way  of 
saving  him  unknown  to  us."  And  John  Smyth. 
that  noble  early  Baptist,  says  in  his  "  Long 
Confession  "  :  "  As  no  man  begetteth  his  child  to 
the  gallows,  and  no  potter  maketh  a  pot  to  break 
it  ;  so  God  does  not  predestinate  any  man  to 
destruction."  Truly,  in  ways  unknown  to  us,  does 
God  care  for  souls  ;  in  ways  unknown  to  us,  through 
the  vast  processes  of  life  and  history,  does  His  work 
go  on,  do  the  signs  of  His  spiritual  kingdom  visibly 

261 


Faith's   Certainties 

appear.  We,  too,  in  our  poor  brief  lives  are  His  care. 
Soon  to  pass  away  and  be  forgotten  of  our  fellows, 
we  shall  not  be  forgotten  of  Him.  His  infinity  is 
too  great  for  such  a  lapse.  The  All-knowing  is  the 
All-Loving.  Here  is  a  Love  that  will  not  let  us  go. 
The  Cross  is  the  assurance  of  it.  In  that  Divine 
Passion  and  Death  we  learn  what  God's  care  means, 
to  what  length  of  sacrifice  it  reache*s. 


262 


XXVI 

OF  CHURCH  UNITY 

The  question  of  the  religious  reunion  of 
Christendom,  one  of  the  greatest  of  all  conceivable 
questions,  has  come  upon  us  in  a  new  and  startling  way. 
It  has  had  no  such  opening  for  many  generations. 
The  possibilities  of  it  on  the  one  side,  and  on  the 
other  the  supreme  difficulties  of  it,  have  been  blazed 
in  upon  the  world's  notice  as  by  a  circle  of  flame. 
On  the  one  hand  there  is  the  new,  powerful  movement 
towards  it.  It  is  a  movement  largely  of  the  new 
countries  of  Anglo-Saxondom.  These  peoples,  remote 
from  the  traditions,  free  from  the  shackles  of  the  old 
world,  have  turned  upon  the  subject  the  initiative, 
the  untramelled  force  of  their  own  fresh  minds. 
So  we  see  in  Canada,  in  Australia,  in  New  Zealand, 
all  over  the  newer  world  of  the  Empire,  a  develop- 
ment, proceeding  with  all  the  breathless  rapidity 
of  our  electric  age,  towards  the  fusion  of  Christian 
bodies  which  hitherto  have  lived  and  grown  apart. 
Simultaneously  with  the  work  in  the  British  Colonies 
there  has  been  going  on  a  precisely  similar  activity 
in  that  other  great  branch  of  the  family  in  the 
United  States.  We  recently  had  in  our  midst  an 
important  deputation,  representative  of  the  leading 
Protestant  Churches  in  the  Republic,  who  were  here 
to  discuss  with  the  authorities  of  English  Christianity 

263 


Faith^s    Certainties 

the  possibility  and  terms  of  a  common  religious 
fellowship.  Out  on  the  mission  field,  where  the  forces 
of  the  Cross  are  engaged  in  the  fight  with  heathenism, 
and  in  the  business  of  world  evangelisation,  the 
question  has  become  urgent,  crucial,  and  insists  upon 
a  solution.  All  that  in  the  spheres  of  politics,  of 
commerce,  and  of  industry  has  been  accomplished 
by  co-operation,  by  the  elimination  of  competition 
and  rivalry,  has  thrust  itself  upon  the  notice  of 
the  Church,  has  become  an  irresistible  argument 
for  a  similar  procedure  within  its  own  borders. 

That,  on  one  side.  But  along  with  events  of  this 
order,  all  working  towards  amalgamation,  we  have, 
at  the  same  time  another  set,  e^^ually  prominent, 
equally  urgent,  which  exhibit  to  us,  in  an  almost 
lurid  way,  the  tremendous  obstacles  that  lie  in  the 
path.  The  storm  in  the  Church  of  England  over  the 
Kikuyu  affair  was  the  counterblast  to  the  spirit  of  the 
American  Mission.  It  revealed,  as  in  a  flash,  the  bulk 
and  the  outline  of  that  foe  to  Christian  unity  which 
has  disfigured  Christianity  for  centuries,  which  has 
rent  it  in  twain,  and  which,  until  it  is  exorcised  and 
finally  slain,  will  reduce  to  nullity  every  effort  towards 
corporate  fellowship.  What  happened  ?  Away  in 
heathen  Africa  a  body  of  missionaries,  of  different 
denominations,  met  together  to  consult  as  to  the 
practicability  of  offering  a  common  front  and  a 
common  action,  as  Christian  teachers,  in  presenting 
the  Gospel  to  the  pagan  world  around  them.  They 
arrived  at  a  working  concordat,  and  crowned  their 
conference  by  a  Communion  service  in  which  two 
AngHcan  bishops  took  part.  For  this  a  fellow 
African  bishop  accuses  them  of  heresy,  of  treachery 
to  Anglican  principles,  and  his  action  is  vehemently 

264 


Of   church    Unity 


supported  by  the  Anglo-Catholic  party  in  England. 
This  party,  which  embraces  in  it  some  of  the  ablest 
and  most  influential  of  the  Anghcan  clergy,  including 
the  majority  of  its  higher  dignitaries,  holds,  as  vital 
to  the  Church,  to  its  esse,  its  very  being,  the  principle 
of  the  historic  episcopate,  derived  by  unbroken 
succession  from  the  Apostles  ;  a  succession  without 
which  there  can  be  no  vahd  sacraments,  no  absolu- 
tion, no  communication  of  the  Church's  saving 
grace.  This  position  (a  position,  by  the  way,  which 
modern  scholarship  has  absolutely  disproved),  on 
the  one  hand,  places  an  impassable  gulf  between 
it  and  all  non-episcopal  communions,  whom  it 
absolutely  unchurches  ;  while,  on  the  other,  it  allies 
it  in  principle  and  sympathy  with  Rome,  whose 
orders  it  recognises,  though  the  recognition  is  not 
reciprocated. 

The  quarrel  arising  out  of  the  Kikuyu  conference 
is  for  the  moment  confined  to  the  contending  parties 
within  the  Church  of  England.  The  idea  that  it 
is  likely  to  lead  to  a  speedy  disruption  there,  is,  we 
imagine,  not  well  founded.  It  is  a  saying  of  Froude 
that  "  the  Church  of  England  was  a  latitudinarian 
experiment,  a  contrivance  to  enable  men  of  opposing 
creeds  to  live  together  without  shedding  each  other's 
blood."  The  contrivance  has  proved  an  excellent 
one,  and  has  lasted  through  the  storms  of  centuries. 
It  founded  the  Church  not  simply  on  religion — of 
which  there  is  plenty  in  both  camps — but  on  some 
other  very  solid  things  ;  on  the  temporalities,  on 
wealth,  on  political  influence,  on  social  prestige. 
And  these  have  proved  enduring  holdfasts.  They 
bore  the  strain  of  the  expulsion  of  the  Puritan  clergy, 
of  the  Evangelical    Revival,  of   the    Hampden    and 

265 


Faith's   Certainties 

the  Gorham  controversies,  of  the  Tractarian  move- 
ment, of  the  secession  of  Newman.  When  we  think 
of  the  tumult  and  the  shouting  over  these  later 
battles,  of  the  prophecies  of  the  inevitable  break- 
up which  accompanied  them,  and  of  the  way  in 
which  the  solid  arguments  of  endowment  and  privi- 
lege prevailed,  and  brought  back  the  waverers  to 
the  status  quo,  we  are  left  with  doubtings  deep  and 
wide  whether  these  arguments  will  not  to-day 
prove  as  efficacious  as  in  those  older  quarrels.  And 
yet  how  strange,  how  tragic  the  position  is  !  In 
the  words  of  Green,  the  historian,  one  of  its  own 
most  distinguished  clergy,  "  the  Church  of  England 
stood  from  that  moment  alone  among  all  the  Churches 
of  the  Christian  world.  The  Reformation  had 
severed  it  irretrievably  from  the  Papacy.  By  its 
rejection  of  all  but  Episcopal  Orders  the  Act  of 
Uniformity  severed  it  as  irretrievably  from  the 
general  body  of  the  Protestant  Churches,  whether 
Lutheran  or  Reformed.  .  .  .  From  that  time 
to  this,  the  Episcopal  Church  has  been  unable  to 
meet  the  varying  spiritual  needs  of  its  adherents 
by  any  modifications  of  its  government  or  its  worship. 
It  stands  alone  among  all  the  great  rehgious  bodies 
of  Western  Christendom." 

The  next-door  neighbour  to  the  Anglo-Catholic 
party  is  the  Roman  Church.  Their  principles  are 
practically  identical.  Our  High  AngHcans  have 
only  to  continue  on  the  road  they  have  entered 
and  Rome  will  be  their  terminus.  Their  idea  of 
the  reunion  of  Christendom  is  a  reunion  with  the 
Roman  and  the  Eastern  or  Greek  Churches.  Is 
there  any  possibility  of  the  non-episcopal  Churches, 
under  present  circumstances,  joining  in  that  move- 

266 


Of  Church   Unity 


ment  ?  With  all  the  good  will  in  the  world,  and 
with  all  our  appreciation — and  it  is  great — of  the 
piety,  the  moral  and  spiritual  excellence  that  are 
to  be  found  in  the  Roman  Church,  we  have  never- 
theless to  face  the  facts.  It  is  not  the  personal 
character  of  CathoHcs  that  is  here  in  question.  It 
is  the  principles  and  the  claims  of  the  Roman  Church 
as  an  organised  body.  Her  later  developments 
and  pronouncements,  not  to  go  beyond  those, 
leave  us  in  no  doubt.  Under  those  developments 
even  the  old  liberties  of  thought  and  action  which 
were  once  to  be  found  in  her  pale  have  ceased  to 
exist.  Where  are  the  ancient  freedoms  of  the  old 
English  Catholicism  ?  Where  those  of  the  Galilean 
Church  in  France — the  Church  of  Bossuet,  of  Fenelon, 
of  Pascal  ?  They  are  gone,  swallowed  up  in  the 
Ultramontanism  which  has  placed  all  power,  all 
authority,  in  the  Roman  Curia.  The  Vatican  Council 
proclaimed  the  infallibility  of  the  Pope,  declared 
him  always  right  while  all  the  world  was  wrong. 
It  has  turned  its  back  upon  all  science,  all  progress, 
all  modern  civilisation.  Here  are  the  express  words 
of  the  Syllabus  :  "  Those  are  plunged  in  a  gross 
error  who  pretend  that  the  Pope  can  and  ought 
to  reconcile  himself  to,  and  to  treat  with,  progress, 
liberalism,  and  modern  civilisation  "  {cum  progresso, 
cum  liheralismo,  et  cum  recenti  civilitate  se  reconciliare 
et  componere).  As  to  liberty  of  conscience,  Pope 
Gregory  XVI.  speaks  of  "  that  absurd  and  erroneous 
opinion,  or  rather  that  form  of  madness,  which 
declares  that  liberty  of  conscience  should  be  asserted 
and  maintained  for  everyone."  And  still  more 
recently,  in  our  own  day,  we  have  the  Jesuit, 
Lehmkiihl,   maintaining   that  "  the  CathoHc  Church 

267 


Faith's    Certainties 

insists  that  it  is  an  erroneous,  perverse,  and  absurd 
assertion  .  .  .  that  hberty  of  conscience  is  the 
individual  right  of  every  person." 

The  basic  principle  of  Rome  is  a  simple  one.  The 
Church  is  of  supernatural  origin,  supernaturally 
endowed  with  knowledge,  truth,  and  authority.  Its 
power  is  supreme  because  it  is  from  above,  while  all 
other  powers,  of  civil  governments,  of  human 
movements  and  institutions,  are  from  beneath.  And 
the  poHcy  which  it  pursues,  relentlessly,  unfalteringly, 
in  every  land  where  it  has  a  footing,  is  to  maintain, 
or  where  it  has  been  lost,  to  regain  that  power  ; 
to  rule  absolutely,  not  simply  in  the  direct  matters  of 
religion,  but  in  those  of  politics,  of  research,  of  the 
social  and  of  the  domestic  life.  Open  to  any  chapter 
of  earlier  or  of  later  history  and  the  threads  of  that 
policy  are  clearly  discerned.  M.  Anatole  France, 
in  his  "  L'Eghse  et  la  Republique,"  gives  the  story 
of  its  dealings  with  his  country  from  the  time  of  the 
Concordat  to  the  final  rupture  with  the  State.  It 
is  an  instructive  study.  And  what  is  the  Church 
which  is  thus  to  rule  the  world  ?  It  is  not  simply 
the  priesthood,  to  the  exclusion  of  all  lay-knowledge 
and  faculty,  but  it  is  the  ultramontane,  the  Itahan 
priesthood,  which  predominates  and  is  all-powerful 
in  the  Curia.  As  Tyrrell  said,  speaking  for  the 
EngHsh  CathoHcs  :  "  We  are  not  even  allowed  to 
know  England  and  the  EngHsh  as  well  as  Italians 
and  Spaniards  do."  The  infallible  authority  to  which 
all  the  world  is  to  bow  ;  which  is  to  put  its  arresting 
hand  on  all  research,  all  science,  all  the  age's  best 
thinking,  is,  then,  the  authority  of  a  group  of  Italians, 
ignorant,  for  the  most  part,  of  the  universe  they  live 
in,  of  all  the  methods  by  which  truth  and  discovery 

268 


Of  Church   Unity 


are  pushed  forward,  and,  because  ignorant,  hostile 
to  them.  To  accept  this  claim  is  to  give  up  our 
dearest  inner  possessions,  the  truth  we  have  won, 
and  the  Hberty  by  which  it  has  been  won.  Rome 
offers  us  unity  on  these  terms  and  on  no  others.  We 
are  not  takers  at  the  price. 

The  Cathohc  party,  in  this  contention,  talks  much 
of  the  sin  of  schism.  In  breaking  away  from  its 
authority  Protestants  have  torn  the  seamless  robe 
of  Christ.  In  dividing  the  one  fellowship  they  have 
committed  the  deadliest  of  offences  against  Him 
whose  prayer  was  "  that  they  may  all  be  one."  It 
is  a  telHng  argument — for  weak  and  uninstructed 
minds.  The  moment  we  begin  to  think  we  see  its 
fallacy.  There  is  a  Christian  unity,  precious  to  all 
devout  souls,  and  to  be  sought  for  with  all  our 
hearts,  but  it  is  not  this  unity.  Has  it  ever  occurred 
to  the  preachers  of  this  doctrine  that  Christianity 
itself  represents  the  most  daring  defiance  of  it  ? 
Christianity  began  with  a  decisive  breach  in  external 
Church  continuity.  It  was  a  schism,  if  ever  there 
was  one,  a  schism  with  the  old  established  Jewish 
Church,  a  schism  which  that  Church  has  never 
forgiven.  To  accept  this  dogma  and  to  be  logical 
in  our  acceptance,  it  behoves  us  all  to  renounce  our 
separatism  and  to  become  good  Jews. 

A  unity  of  this  sort  is,  in  fact,  contrary  to  the 
nature  of  things,  contrary  to  that  divine  law  of 
progress,  of  the  cosmic  and  the  human  movement  by 
which  the  world  has  reached  its  present  position. 
Nature,  in  the  plant  world  and  in  the  human  world, 
proceeds  by  splits,  by  divisions,  by  swarmings  off,  by 
the  creation  of  diversities.  It  is  her  method  of 
securing  that  variety,  that  newness  of  environment 

269 


Faith^s    Certainties 

and  of  opportunity  by  which  she  nurtures  her 
fresh  creations  and  brings  her  new  worlds  to  birth. 
That  is  her  way,  manifest  in  every  department,  and 
we  may  be  tolerably  safe  in  following  it.  And  in  her 
development  of  man  she  has,  contrary  to  the 
Roman  doctrine,  insisted  on  the  absolute  freedom 
of  the  mind  as  the  one  condition  of  his  discovery 
of  truth.  In  the  use  of  that  freedom  we  are  dis- 
covering where,  in  the  region  of  the  mind,  the  one 
unity  hes.  It  is  in  the  harmony  which  is  increasingly 
revealing  itself  in  every  department  of  research, 
between  one  truth  and  another.  Beneath  all  nature's 
endless  varieties  we  see  the  working  of  one  law,  of  one 
intelligence,  of  one  primal  force.  Here,  indeed,  we 
find  one  of  the  great  factors  of  that  religious  unity  for 
which  all  good  men  are  striving.  It  is  the  unity 
we  are  learning  to  see  between  the  facts  of  the  external 
universe  and  the  facts  of  the  spirit.  That  is  where 
science  and  religion  are  meeting.  It  is  a  reunion 
better  and  deeper  than  anything  our  Church 
conferences  can  devise. 

It  is  along  this  line  that  the  only  Church  unity 
worth  the  name  will  eventually  come  about.  It  will 
be  a  slow  process,  slow  as  the  evolution  of  the  human 
spirit.  The  hope  of  it  hes  in  this  :  that  the  best  men 
everywhere,  of  every  Church  and  denomination,  are 
learning  the  same  things,  and  by  the  teaching  of 
facts  are  thinking  along  the  same  hues.  They  are 
coming  together  under  the  guidance  of  the  same 
light.  That  light  has  already,  under  the  workings 
of  spiritual  freedom,  reached  the  leading  Churches 
of  Protestant  Christendom.  The  effect  of  it  is  seen 
in  the  rapprochements  which  are  the  religious 
feature  of  to-day.     And  it  will  eventually  reach  the 

270 


Of  Church   Unity 


Catholic  world,  and  produce  there  its  inevitable 
effect.  But  Catholicism  will  only  have  become  fully 
Christian,  will  only  have  reached  the  first  condition 
of  union,  when  it  has  purged  itself  utterly  of  the  lust 
of  domination,  of  the  pretensions,  the  falsities  upon 
which  its  system  of  priestcraft  has  been  erected. 
It  will  have  to  come  down  from  its  pride  of  the 
infallible  teacher  to  that  humbler  place,  where  all  the 
triumphs  of  science  have  been  won,  the  place  of 
the  learner.  Its  officers  will  have  to  learn  that 
their  business  is  not  that  of  ruling  men's  souls,  but 
of  helping  and  edifying.  It  will  have  to  learn  that 
God's  truth  is  dispensed,  not  at  the  Vatican,  but  by 
that  all-informing,  all-enlightening  Spirit  who  is 
working  everywhere  in  the  human  consciousness, 
slowly  correcting  its  errors,  adding  to  its  knowledge, 
enriching  and  strengthening  its  faculties. 

That  will  be  a  long  process,  but  it  will  come  and 
is  coming.  Nothing  can  resist  the  steady  maturing 
of  the  human  mind.  Till  Ca-tholicism  has  learned 
that  lesson  it  will  be  left  out  of  the  great  movement. 
The  freer  Churches  of  Christendom  are  already  within 
reach  of  the  great  consummation.  Those  Churches 
will,  by  and  by,  present  the  spectacle  of  a  nobler, 
healthier  union  than  Christian  history  has  ever 
before  known.  What  will  be  its  form  ?  May  we 
venture  a  prediction  ?  It  will,  if  we  mistake  not, 
be  on  the  hues  of  that  Anglo-Saxon  fellowship  in 
which  this  movement  has  taken  its  rise.  England, 
her  great  ring  of  colonies,  the  sister  State  of  America, 
what  are  they  ?  Great  free  communities,  each 
self-governing,  each  guarding  zealously  its  own 
liberties,  developing  its  own  individaahty,  but  united 
in  one  sentiment,  full  of  profitable  interchanges,  of 

271 


Faith^s   Certainties 

gracious  reciprocities,  realising  in  the  midst  of 
diversity  their  essential  oneness.  So  the  Churches 
of  Christ,  rooted  in  their  own  history,  cherishing  their 
special  traditions,  exercising  their  special  aptitudes, 
will  dwell  and  work  together ;  at  home  amid  their 
own  populations,  and  abroad  in  front  of  the  heathen 
races,  exhibiting  the  unity  of  one  Spirit,  that  union 
of  freedom  and  of  love  which  is  the  hall-mark  of 
Christ ;  that  secret  of  Jesus,  which  is  yet  to  win 
and  redeem  the  world. 


272 


XXVII 

THE  UNSEEN  BUILDERS 

When  you  come  first  upon  a  great  city  you  have 
borne  in  upon  you  the  impression  of  man  as,  above 
all  things,  the  builder.  If  he  had  done  nothing  else, 
you  see  him  here  as  wonderful.  In  New  York — in 
some  ways  his  most  colossal  achievement — he  has 
reared  stone  mountains.  In  those  towering 
structures,  which  seem  as  though  they  would  tear 
down  the  sky,  he  has  surpassed  the  ancient  Babel, 
surpassed  it  also  in  the  confusion  of  tongues  in  the 
streets  below.  London  holds  you,  not  with  its  height, 
but  with  its  vastness.  As  you  traverse  its  leagues 
of  surface,  you  have  a  feeling  as  of  the  ocean,  of  a 
human  something  that  is  shoreless,  boundless,  infinite. 
The  city  of  cities,  for  a  first  view,  is  Constantinople, 
seen  at  least  as  we  once  saw  it.  As  we  moved  up 
the  Dardanelles  in  the  early  morning,  everything 
was  hidden  by  a  dense  mist.  Then  suddenly,  as 
though  a  curtain  had  been  drawn,  the  mist  rolled 
away,  and  what  a  scene  !  To  our  left  Europe,  to 
our  right  Asia,  the  miles  of  shore  on  each  side  lined 
with  palaces,  glorious  creations  of  dazzling  white, 
some  of  them  centuries  old  ;  but  in  that  clear,  smoke- 
less air,  looking  as  though  they  had  been  built 
yesterday.  No  wonder  men  have  fought  for 
Constantinople,  the  place  of  incomparable  situation, 
commanding  at  once  two  seas  and  two  continents. 

273 

18 


Faith^s    Certainties 

Every  great  city,  in  what  it  offers  to  the  eye,  in  what 
its  buildings  say,  has  its  own  soul,  its  own  character. 
You  feel  that  in  Paris,  in  Vienna  ;  you  feel  it  intensely 
in  Rome. 

But  as  you  traverse  Broadway,  or  climb  the 
Palatine,  or  walk  up  Ludgate-hill,  another  thought 
will  sometimes  come.  Amid  all  these  miles  of  stone 
that  smite  the  senses,  amid  all  this  roar  of  traffic, 
this  bewildering  movement,  there  comes  a  sense  of 
that  other  world  around  you,  all  silent,  with  no  sign 
of  its  presence,  yet  all  so  real,  so  intense,  so  unutter- 
ably mighty — the  world  of  the  city's  thought.  These 
buildings  themselves  are  all  thoughts,  gone  into 
form  and  structure,  the  thoughts  of  men  dead,  many 
of  them  long  ago,  but  living  here,  incorporate  in 
wood  and  stone.  St.  Paul's  is  firstly  and  lastly  an 
idea,  so  is  St.  Sophia,  so  is  New  York's  Metropohtan 
Tower.  But  these  buildings  are  not  the  main  thing. 
The  city  itself,  these  hurrying  crowds,  each  man  full 
of  his  affairs — what  a  realm  is  here,  a  realm  without 
statistics,  without  any  instruments  that  can  gauge 
its  quality,  its  proportions  ;  a  realm  which  contains 
all  of  good  and  evil ;  a  realm  that  holds  all  the 
possibilities  of  to-day,  and  of  the  endless  to-morrows  ! 
It  is  here  that — in  the  deepest,  the  one  true  sense — 
we  meet  with  man  the  builder.  Each  one  of  these 
myriads  is  a  creator,  hard  at  work  at  this  moment 
creating  himself,  creating  his  neighbour,  creating 
his  world.  Here  is  the  real  city,  its  maker,  its  soul — 
the  crowd,  the  bodily  visible  crowd — and  filling 
it,  flowing  through  it,  that  silent  river  of  thought. 
Let  us  stand  by  its  shore  a  little  and  look  at  its 
depths.  It  is  a  realm  populous  with  wonders,  where 
he  all  life's  mysteries  and  also  all  its  lessons. 

274 


The  Unseen  Builders 

This  thought- world,  unseen,  Hketheair  or  the  ether, 
is  enclosed  mainly,  by  no  means  entirely,  in  these 
moving  bodies  of  men.  It  is  in  them,  but  not  of 
them.  You  can  never,  by  any  process,  extract  one 
from  the  other.  The  brain  is  an  organ  of  mind,  just 
as  a  piano  is  an  organ  of  music.  But  the  brain's 
white  and  grey  matter  is  no  more  mind  than  the 
piano  strings  are  a  Beethoven  sonata.  Tyndall, 
whose  conception  of  the  possibilities  of  matter  led 
some  misguided  people  to  hail  him  as  a  materialist, 
knew  too  well  its  limitations.  He  comes  back  to 
the  confession  :  "  The  passage  from  the  physics  of 
the  brain  to  the  corresponding  facts  of  consciousness 
is  inconceivable  as  the  result  of  mechanism."  And 
this  farther  :  "  The  problem  of  the  connection  of 
body  and  soul  is  as  insoluble  in  its  modern  form  as 
it  was  in  the  prescientific  ages."  The  mind  seems 
to  come  into  the  body  at  birth,  to  grow  with  it,  to 
mature  with  it,  to  decline,  decay  and  die  with  it. 
Lucretius,  far  back  in  the  old  world,  founded  an 
argument  for  materialism  on  this  .  seeming  corre- 
spondence. To-day  we  see  a  little  farther  than 
Lucretius,  a  little  farther  into  the  meaning  of  what 
we  call  life  and  death.  The  body's  death  is  no  death  ; 
it  is  only  a  change.  Its  substance  is  immortal,  not 
one  atom  of  it  destructible.  And  no  fact  emerges 
which  tells  us  that  mind-stuff — whatever  it  is — has 
any  less  lastingness.  There  is  so  much  simulated 
death,  death  which  suddenly  starts  back  into  hfe. 
Has  it  ever  occurred  to  you  the  queer  thing  that 
happens  when  you  open  a  book  ?  It  was  written, 
perhaps,  centuries  ago.  All  that  while  back  a  man 
put  his  thoughts  there.  The  man  himself,  as  a 
bodily  presence,  vanished,  so  long  ago.     You  turn 

275 


Faith's   Certainties 

the  page,  bring  your  thought  to  those  dead  curves 
and  strokes  of  printer's  ink,  and  lo  !  the  dead  man's 
thought  leaps  up  at  you,  ahve,  arguing,  persuading, 
convincing,  or  perhaps  amusing,  or  annoying  you. 
Here  is  a  soul  still  talking,  the  soul  of  a  Shakespeare 
or  of  a  Cagliostro,  of  a  Voltaire  or  of  a  St.  Paul. 
You  can  never  get  rid  of  bodies,  finally  ;  no,  nor  can 
you  get  rid  of  souls.  Your  visible  is  immortal,  and 
your  invisible  is  immortal.  Both  life  and  death 
are  forms  of  the  same  thing — they  are  of  the  stuff 
of  eternity. 

Man  is,  for  us,  the  highest  organised  expression  of 
thought.  His  body  matter,  and  especially  his  brain 
matter,  contain  more  of  it  than  anything  else  we 
see.  But  the  outside  world  also  is  full  of  it,  as  full 
of  it  as  it  can  hold.  A  stone  is  congested  thought. 
Its  weight,  its  colour,  its  cohesion,  all  its  qualities, 
are  really,  when  you  come  to  think  of  it,  mental 
things.  They  can  have  no  reality  apart  from  a  mind 
— yours  or  someone  else's — that  knows  them  as 
quahties,  and  deals  with  them  as  such.  When 
you  come  higher,  to  a  flower,  a  bird,  you  have  mind 
visible  moving  towards  self-expression,  beginning  to 
know  itself.  Is  not  Schelling  right  in  his  philosophy 
of  nature,  where  he  exhibits  her,  in  all  her  processes, 
as  an  intelligence  struggling  towards  consciousness, 
towards  personality  ?  The  truth  is  we  are  in  a 
world  crammed  with  soul,  alert  with  deathless  mind. 
The  vase  on  your  table  has  in  it  the  soul  of  the  artist 
who  fashioned  it,  and  behind  that,  in  the  very 
substance  of  which  it  is  made  you  are  peering  into  a 
mind  vaster  than  human. 

But  we  started  this  theme  with  the  excellent 
intention   of   being   entirely   practical,    and    we    are 

276 


The    Unseen    Builders 

wandering  off  into  every  kind  of  speculation.  Let 
us  quit  that  and  get  to  the  things  we  want  most  of 
all  to  say.  The  thing  that  holds  us,  as  we  watch 
the  surging  city  crowd,  is  that  every  single  member 
of  it  is  a  builder.  He  is  building  himself.  Inside 
each  passing  figure  is  a  something  at  work — invisible, 
no  one  of  its  parts  ever  showing  to  mortal  eye,  a 
something  not  to  be  described  by  any  physical 
analogy,  something  we  call  now  the  thought,  now  the 
feeling,  now  the  will — and  this  complex  immaterial 
something  is  at  every  moment  creating,  building. 
Building  what  ?  You  may  say,  for  one  thing,  it  is 
building  the  outside  world.  Certainly  it  is  doing 
that.  The  whole  outside  world  is  simply  the  clothing 
of  ideas.  Cathedrals,  gaols,  armies,  fleets,  railways, 
are  just  thoughts  projected  outwards,  housing  them- 
selves in  these  visible  things.  As  men's  thoughts 
grow  the  world  will  grow.  Ever  as  the  thought 
becomes  clearer,  wider,  bolder,  will  the  world 
become  a  bigger,  bolder,  more  beautiful  world. 
But  that  outside  world  is  not,  after  all,  the 
main  thing.  The  chief  matter  is  that  the  man, 
inwardly,  is  building  himself.  In  the  religious  books 
of  ancient  Persia  we  have  a  striking  picture  of  what 
happens  to  a  good  man  after  death.  In  his  journey 
beyond  the  river  he  meets  a  radiant  figure,  glowing 
with  ethereal  beauty.  Fascinated,  he  asks  its  name. 
Smihngly  the  figure  repHes  :  "  I  am  your  true,  your 
best  self  ;  I  am  the  sum  of  your  ideals,  of  your  best 
thoughts,  of  your  struggles  for  the  good,  of  your 
strong  resolves.  I  am  you  ;  you  are  I  ;  we  join  now 
together  in  the  glorious  harmony  of  the  celestial  life." 
A  wonderful  enough  picture  this,  from  that  far-off 
age.     It  is   a   parable,    of  course,   sprung   from  the 

277 


Faith's    Certainties 

imagination  of  the  vivid  East.  But  let  us  not  miss 
its  central  truth.  This  is,  that  of  all  possible 
structures  this  hidden  one,  of  our  own  character, 
our  final  being,  is  the  chief,  meant  to  be  the  finest, 
the  most  lasting.  We  are  building  it  day  by  day. 
And  it  is  here  that  Christianity  strikes  its  most 
insistent  note.  For  it  is  above  all  things  a  religion 
of  the  innermost  thought.  The  present  writer, 
discussing  once  the  religious  question  with  a 
travelled  fellow-countryman  whom  he  met  on  the 
Continent,  found,  to  his  astonishment,  that  this  very 
thing,  the  control  of  the  thoughts,  was,  to  his 
companion,  the  leading  objection  against  Christianity. 
"  An  impossible  religion,"  he  exclaimed,  "  which 
presumes  to  tell  you  not  only  what  you  are  to  do, 
but  what  you  are  to  think  !  "  It  reminded  one  of 
Lord  Melbourne,  after  listening  to  a  searching 
sermon  :  "  I  have  always  been  a  consistent  defender 
of  Church  and  State,  but  I  am  not  going  to  stand 
a  religion  which  proposes  an  inquisition  on  one's 
private  life."  It  is  the  very  complaint  of  Caecilius 
against  the  early  Christians  :  "  What  monstrous, 
what  portentous  notions  do  they  fabricate  !  That 
that  God  of  theirs,  whom  they  can  neither  show 
nor  see,  should  be  inquiring  diligently  into  the 
characters,  the  acts,  nay,  the  very  words  and  secret 
thoughts  of  all  men  !  "  Surely  there  was  never  a 
funnier  objection.  For  if  reHgion  does  not  live  there, 
in  our  inmost  thought  ;  if  it  does  not  habitually  work 
there,  it  lives  and  works  nowhere.  Do  we  not  see  that 
our  thought  is  everything,  our  whole  being  ?  When 
we  have  got  our  thought  right,  everything  is  right  ; 
when  that  is  wrong,  everything  is  wrong.  We  know 
how  true  that  is  about  a  bridge.     If  the  thought  in  it 

278 


The    Unseen    Builders 

is  wrong  we  do  not  want  to  cross  that  bridge.  And 
what  is  true  of  the  bridge  is  true  of  all  the  rest.  To 
cleanse  our  thought-world  of  all  the  vasty  wrongness 
that  gets  into  it ;  to  cleanse  it  of  envy,  jealousy, 
pride,  despondency  ;  to  get  our  thought  resolutely 
into  the  right  habits,  into  the  right  way  of  regarding 
ourselves,  our  world,  our  neighbour,  our  duty  ; 
to  habituate  it  to  lovingness,  to  nobleness,  to  self- 
sacrifice,  to  all  that  approves  itself  as  the  best,  what 
else  is  it  that  we  are  in  this  world  for,  what  else  than 
this  is  success,  and  what  else  can  make  life  worth 
Hving  ?  More  than  that,  when  we  are  on  this  road, 
and  following  it  diligently,  what  seeming  misfortunes, 
what  hardships,  what  endurances  can  take  from  us  the 
consciousness  of  inner  blessedness,  the  feeling  that 
it  is  good  to  be  here  ? 

And  this  silent,  potent  working  on  ourselves  means 
a  silent,  hardly  less  potent  working  on  others.  We 
are  building  their  structure  also.  And  this,  if  we 
fairly  grasp  it,  becomes  one  of  life's  finest  features, 
one  of  its  surest  avenues  into  happiness.  The 
builder  anywhere,  if  he  is  good  for  anything,  enjoys 
himself.  His  work-area,  to  outsiders,  may  seem  a 
confused,  desolate  affair.  It  is  a  collection  of  imper- 
fections, of  rubbish-heaps,  of  half-finished  things. 
He,  with  his  plan  in  his  head,  with  the  results  that  are 
coming,  sees  otherwise,  and  comes  to  his  task  with 
joyous  heart.  And  we  are  all  builders,  if  we  knew 
it.  Wives  with  their  husbands,  parents  with  their 
children,  teachers  with  their  pupils,  ourselves  in 
relation  to  all  the  social  intimacies,  we  are  there 
in  a  set  of  unfinished  structures.  How  are  we  taking 
them  ?  It  is  fatally  easy  to  take  them  the  wrong 
way.     What  is   the   meaning   of  passing  judgment 

279 


Faith's    Certainties 

on  people  ?  Why  are  we,  on  the  highest  authority, 
warned  off  from  it  ?  Because  that  is  to  make  the 
tremendous  mistake  of  regarding  them  as  finished 
structures,  with  nothing  left  for  us  but  to  appraise, 
and,  as  the  almost  assured  consequence — to  condemn. 
And  so,  in  a  thousand  homes,  criticisms,  dissensions, 
quarrels,  despairs.  And  all  this  such  waste  of  force, 
such  waste  of  happiness  !  Whereas,  if  instead  of 
standing  as  critics  amid  the  mortar  heaps,  bewailing 
their  ugliness,  we  took  ourselves  as  builders,  eager 
for  construction,  would  there  not  be  a  difference  ? 

These  evolving  characters,  with  all  their  roughness 
of  outline,  their  uncomeliness  of  feature,  what  if  you 
take  them  as  your  builder's  sites,  where  noble  struc- 
tures may  be  reared  ?  The  sheer  difference  of  attitude 
is  immense.  Where  the  critic  is  all  dissatisfaction, 
the  builder  is  all  enthusiasm.  Only,  for  heaven's 
sake,  take  care  how  you  do  the  building  !  It  is  so 
rarely  by  words.  Save  us  from  the  people  who  pose 
as  examples,  who  on  every  occasion  deliver  their 
little  moral  lectures,  their  Pecksniffian  maxims, 
who  talk  from  their  own  height  of  virtue  down  to 
the  inferiors  they  patronise  !  These  are  no  builders. 
They  lack  that  first  principle  of  moral  architecture, 
the  knowledge  of  themselves.  The  work  we  are 
thinking  of  is  hardly  an  affair  of  words  at  all ; 
certainly  not  of  lecture  words.  It  is  a  work  of  insight 
and  of  sympathy  ;  of  faith  in  our  brother  and  of  the 
attitude  towards  him  which  faith  begets.  We  see 
in  him,  behind  all  his  faults,  the  possible  structure, 
and  the  materials  for  it  that  lie  in  him.  And  with 
these  materials  we  deal,  letting  all  others  severely 
alone.  We  perceive  his  own  daily  inner  struggle,  of 
his  good  with  his  evil,  and  we  put  all  our  strength 

280 


The    Unseen    Builders 

into  his  fight.  Does  his  evil,  his  passion,  his  temper 
,  overflow  upon  us  ?  Shall  we  reinforce  that  bad 
side  of  him  by  adding  fuel  to  the  flame  ?  The  essence 
of  a  quarrel  is  that  each  is  meeting  the  other's  evil 
by  his  own  evil.  Here  are  two  bads  uniting  for  a 
common  defeat  of  the  good.  At  such  moments  the 
thing  is,  not  to  talk,  least  of  all  to  talk  back,  but  to 
dive  down  to  the  depths  of  our  being,  down  to  our 
innermost  reserves  of  faith,  hope  and  love.  There, 
where  in  silent  wrestling  we  have  won  the  victory 
over  ourselves,  we  have  won  it  for  our  brother.  For 
wrath  cannot  contend  for  ever  against  love.  A  soul 
of  that  temper  in  a  household,  in  a  workroom,  yes,  in 
a  senate,  in  a  world,  is  accomplishing  the  finest 
artistry,  is  rearing  structures  with  which  no 
Parthenons  or  Taj  Mahals  can  compare.  They  are 
spiritual  buildings  with  heaven's  own  beauty,  its  own 
eternity  upon  them,  palaces  to  adorn  the  City  of 
God. 

Everything,  in  the  long  run,  comes  back  upon 
this  inner  building.  Says  Carlyle  :  "  The  spiritual 
everywhere  originates  the  practical,  models  it, 
makes  it ;  so  that  the  saddest  external  condition 
of  affairs  among  men  is  but  evidence  of  a  still  sadder 
internal  one."  When  will  the  world  find  common 
sense  enough  to  see  that  ?  All  the  external  ugHnesses 
of  our  national  life  ;  its  city  slums,  its  prisons,  its 
hideous  warships,  its  embattled  armies ;  all  the 
scowls  on  human  faces  ;  all  the  slouching,  decrepit, 
rag-clad  human  forms,  are  the  outcome,  the  material 
expression  of  a  primal  inward  ugliness.  And  every 
improvement  here  begins  from  within.  As  our 
souls  grow  cleaner,  so  all  our  bodies,  so  all  our  streets. 
As  the  soul  reaches  towards  beauty,  our  architecture 

281 


Faith's    Certainties 

will  grow  beautiful ;  a  new  beauty  will  come  to  our 
countryside.  Man  cannot  get  away  from  his 
spiritual  destiny.  His  whole  problem  is  spiritual. 
The  New  Testament  doctrine  of  heaven  and  hell 
means  finally  this,  that  inner  beauty  makes  out- 
ward beauty,  that  inner  ugliness  makes  outward 
ugliness.  But  heaven  is  going  to  conquer  hell.  If 
we  took  our  world  to-day  as  a  finished  business  we 
all  ought  to  be  pessimists.  But  so  long  as  we  are 
builders  we  shall  never  be  pessimists.  When  we  see 
what  can  be  done,  is  being  done,  in  ourselves,  we  are 
full  of  hope  for  the  world.  The  mere  scientific 
thought  of  the  last  half  century  has  transformed  the 
earth,  and  we  are  going  to  have  still  better  thoughts. 
Science  is,  after  all,  the  mere  surface  of  the  soul.  It 
handles  matter  and  force,  but  humanity  means 
something  deeper.  As,  in  its  incessant  probing,  it 
reaches  towards  the  centre,  it  will  discover  that 
cleverness  is  not  comparable  with  holiness  ;  that 
matter  and  force  are  ever  misused  except  as  the 
instruments  of  purity  and  love.  To  these  humanity 
will  finally  go  as  the  quarries  for  its  building.  From 
these  stores  of  inner  beauty  will  come  our  New 
Jerusalem,  our  new  earth  and  heaven. 


iSt 


XXVIII 
THE  SUCCESSOR 

We  dismiss  the  old  year  and  hail  the  new.  Le 
roi  est  mort ;  vive  le  roi  I  There  is  a  clanging  of 
midnight  bells  ;  in  the  streets  the  roar  of  excited 
crowds.  In  various  fashions,  from  the  solemn  to 
the  grotesque,  the  world  speeds  the  parting,  hails  the 
coming  guest.  The  old  year  is  played  out.  It  has 
no  secrets  for  us.  We  can  tell  its  fortunes  better 
than  could  Old  Moore ;  for  we  know  them.  Its 
successor,  the  new  one,  brings  with  it  the  fascination 
of  the  unknown.  Its  page  is  all  to  be  written  ;  its 
wealth  of  life  all  to  be  unfolded.  Succession,  the 
passing  of  one  thing  into  another,  is  the  most  constant 
of  facts  ;  the  one  thing  ever  before  our  eyes,  and  yet 
the  one  thing  which  is  beyond  the  reach  of  the  human 
intellect  to  understand.  Have  you  ever  tried  to 
penetrate  the  mystery  of  becoming;  to  see  what  is 
really  contained  in  it  ?  It  seems  a  combination  of 
impossibles.  It  is  at  once  a  being  and  a  not  being  ; 
a  moment  when  the  thing  is  not  and  a  moment  when 
it  is  ;  and  yet  by  what  process  of  rational  thought, 
by  what  canon  of  sane  reasoning,  can  you  deduce 
a  something  from  a  nothing  ?  Thus  is  it  that  nature's 
cunning  mocks  us ;  that  her  seeming  simplest 
things,  displayed  without  disguise  every  day  before 
us,  leave  our  understanding  bewildered,  beggared. 

283 


Faith^s    Certainties 

Succession  is,  we  say,  in  this  sense,  a  mystery,  but 
it  is  a  mystery  that  is  ever  with  us.  There  is  no 
interlude,  no  half-time  called  in  the  game.  It  is 
almost  terrifying,  this  never-ending  movement.  One 
is  inclined  at  times  to  scream  out  a  protest  ;  to 
beseech  the  universe  to  take  a  rest.  No  use.  It  is 
the  everlasting  flux,  and  we  are  in  it,  a  part  of  it. 
The  same  law  which  sends  the  earth  swinging  cease- 
lessly on  its  orbit  keeps  your  blood  circulating,  creates 
in  you  the  new  cell  and  discharges  the  old  one  ;  sends 
you  from  each  moment  to  the  next  and  towards 
the  final  one.  The  actual  is  pressed  hard  by  the 
potential ;  pressed  till  it  is  dislodged  by  it.  The  one 
permanent  thing  seems  to  be  the  law  of  eternal  change. 

Every  single  thing  has,  waiting  for  it,  its  successor  ; 
and  every  single  person.  It  is  well  for  all  of  us  to 
take  note  of  that  fact,  and  to  accommodate  ourselves 
to  it.  An  old  man  should  have  learned  better  by 
this  time  than  to  begrudge  the  young.  Yet  the  heir 
is  apt  to  be  an  unpopular  person  ;  at  times  he  has 
sinister  glances  bestowed  on  him.  He  is  too  constant 
a  reminder  of  what  is  coming  !  Age  yields  its  pre- 
rogatives hardly.  Brienne  tells  of  Cardinal  Mazarin 
that  he  saw  him,  in  his  last  days,  tottering  in  a 
gallery  of  his  splendid  palace,  looking  round  on  its 
treasures,  and  heard  him  mutter,  "  //  fant  quitter 
tout  cela  !  "  And  yet  it  is  a  beneficent  law  this, 
which  brings  to  an  end  the  tenure  of  the  old. 
Martineau,  in  a  noble  passage,  written  in  his  own  old 
age,  shows  how  evil  for  the  world  would  be  the  unduly 
prolonged  continuance  of  one  generation.  It  would 
mean  the  continued  dominance  of  one  set  of  ideas  ; 
would  check  and  hamper  the  development  of  the 
younger    minds    and    activities ;     would    become    a 

384 


The    Successor 

tyranny  fatal  to  progress.  In  any  case  it  is  better 
to  accept  cheerfully  the  world's  order,  to  accept  it 
as  a  sound  one.  Is  it,  indeed,  any  use  kicking  against 
it,  when  the  only  result  will  be  the  bruising  of  our 
own  shins  ? 

The  law  of  succession,  as  we  trace  it  back  through 
the  ages,  seems  too  subtle  for  our  comprehension. 
It  baffles  us  with  its  inconsistencies.  Viewing 
it  from  one  aspect  we  are  astonished  at  its 
conservatism,  at  the  fidehty  with  which  the  old  is 
reproduced  in  the  new.  "  Plus  qu  change,"  says 
the  French  proverb,  "  plus  c  est  la  meme  chose." 
The  latest  fashion,  whether  of  customs  or  of  thoughts, 
if  we  look  a  second  time,  reveals  itself  as  an  old 
acquaintance.  A  moderate  acquaintance  with  the 
Greek  Fathers  would  enable  you  to  reproduce  from 
them  almost  every  modern  Church  heresy.  Our 
Christmas  customs.  Yule  logs,  holly,  feastings, 
singings,  mummings,  go  back  thousands  of  years 
before  a.d.  i.  Newman,  in  his  essay  on  "  Develop- 
ment," showed  how  nearly  every  Catholic  custom 
and  ceremony  had  its  counterpart  in  pagan  times. 
The  stream  of  tradition  as  it  rolls  along  leaves  its 
deposit  deep  on  the  souls  of  men.  Where  everything 
in  the  way  of  ideas  seems  to  have  been  revolutionised, 
down  beneath,  in  the  realm  of  feehng,  the  old  has 
left  its  mark.  Its  action  is  well  represented  by  the 
remark  attributed  to  Fontenelle  :  "  I  do  not  beheve 
in  ghosts,  but  I  am  afraid  of  them."  We  can  never 
get  rid  of  the  past  if  we  want  to.  Our  ancestors 
live  in  us  and  work  in  us,  most  of  all  when  we  least 
realise  the  fact. 

So  much  for  the  conservatism  in  succession. 
But  take  now  the  other  side.     Before  we  reach  the 

285 


Faith's    Certainties 

human  story,  in  evolution's  humblest  forms,  we  are 
met  with  a  staggering  radicaHsm.  In  animal  and 
plant  life  Darwin  taught  us  how  evolution  proceeds 
by  the  development  of  varieties.  Nature  has  her 
own  slow  and  roundabout  way  of  developing  them  ; 
man  can  enormously  help  the  process  by  artificial 
means.  But  neither  Darwin  nor  any  of  his  successors 
has  been  able  to  tell  us  how  the  variation  came  in 
the  first  place.  It  is  the  greatest  question  to-day  in 
biology.  It  is  the  standing  miracle,  and  not  the 
less  so  in  the  smaller  variations  which  escape  the 
common  eye  than  in  those  vast  apparent  leaps  in 
which  nature  seems  to  have  crossed  all  the  boundary 
lines  ;  when  she  passed  from  the  inorganic  to  the 
organic,  from  matter  to  life,  from  animal  to  man. 
It  is  when  we  watch  her  daring  in  these  directions 
that  we  find  it  less  difficult  to  beheve  in  that  great 
leap  of  history,  the  birth  of  Jesus  of  GaHlee ;  that 
birth  where  man,  after  reaching  the  human,  starts 
afresh  on  his  path  to  the  Divine. 

There  is  a  law  of  succession  in  the  thought  world 
as  much  as  in  the  outer  world.  And  the  outer 
changes  with  the  change  in  the  inner.  Could  you 
compare,  on  any  standard  of  comparison,  the  universe 
in  which  a  Bergson  or  a  Eucken  fives,  with  that  in 
which  an  African  savage  lives  ?  And  this  evolution 
of  ideas  is  as  inevitable,  one  may  say  as  pre-ordained, 
as  the  evolution  of  plants  and  animals.  The 
succession  here  has  reached  the  deepest  things. 
Have  we  quite  realised  the  change  which  the  ages 
have  brought  into  our  idea  of  God  ?  Could  we  act 
now  as  Cromwell  and  his  Ironsides  acted  when  he  shut 
up  some  of  the  papist  Irish  and  burned  them  in  the 
church  at  Drogheda,  beficving  he  was  acting  under 

286 


The    Successor 

a  divine  commission,  a  commission  like  that  of  the 
prophet  when  he  "  hewed  Agag  in  pieces  before  the 
Lord  "7  Do  we  accept  now  the  logic  of  Queen  Mary 
when  she  burned  heretics,  declaring  she  was  only 
doing  what  God  would  do  to  them  in  hell  ?  That 
is  no  longer  the  God  we  worship.  The  spiritual  move- 
ment has  gone  past  that  stage,  and  will  never  return 
to  it. 

The  successor  ;  how  it  crowds  in  upon  us  at  every 
point,  sometimes  in  a  very  awful  way !  In  our 
personal  doings,  for  instance.  We  can  will  the  thing 
we  are  going  to  do  ;  we  cannot  will  the  thing  that 
follows.  That  is  out  of  our  hands ;  it  will  work  on  us 
henceforth  according  to  the  iron  law  of  consequence. 
Men  make  their  decisions  so  often  in  the  spirit  of 
M.  Ollivier,  the  French  Minister,  when  he  entered  on 
the  war  with  Germany  "  with  a  light  heart."  As  he 
found,  there  is  no  lightness  in  what  follows.  And 
yet  even  here,  in  these  grim  chains  of  sequence,  there 
is  a  freedom  and  room  for  the  soul  to  move.  We 
are  never,  at  any  moment  of  our  lives,  the  victims  of 
a  mere  necessity.  Upon  each  event,  as  it  follows, 
our  personality  can  play.  We  can  create  it,  as  it 
were,  after  our  own  image.  Let  the  image  be  a  pure 
one,  illumined,  strengthened  by  faith  and  love,  and 
it  shall  be,  amid  the  crude  elements  of  the  outward,  as 
the  philosopher's  stone,  which  turns  the  iron  into  gold. 

What  is  coming  in  the  immediate  succession  of 
the  years  ?  Many  sincere  men  take  a  pessimistic 
view.  They  foresee  a  slump  in  religion  and  morals 
as  inevitable  as  the  slump  in  trade,  and  perhaps, 
with  a  less  chance  of  recovery.  Certainly  the  times 
are  difficult  and  some  of  the  omens  menacing.  What, 
for  instance,  are  our  youth  thinking  about  ?     We  look 

287 


Faith's   Certainties 

into  the  eyes  of  so  many  to  find  there  no  reflex  of 
"  the  vision  splendid."  Are  materiahsm  and 
scepticism,  the  struggle  for  existence,  the  lust  of 
luxury  and  pleasure,  to  bring  us,  if  we  are  not  there 
,  already,  to  the  decadent  Roman  world  which 
Arnold  pictures  ? 

On  that  hard  pagan  world  disgust 

And  secret  loathing  fell, 
Deep  weariness  and  sated  lust 

Made  human  life  a  hell. 

That  picture  is  Rembrandtesque  in  its  darkness, 
but  it  has  also,  after  Rembrandt,  its  wonderful 
light  effect.  It  shows  us  the  pit,  but  also  the  way 
out.  Is  it  not  certain  that  man  never  lives  on  sated 
lust,  that  nought  but  deadly  weariness  and  a  sense 
of  hell  must  follow  these  courses  ?  And  if  we  have 
multitudes  who  to-day  follow  them,  there  is,  we 
believe,  a  growing  host,  on  the  other  hand,  of  varied 
creeds  but  of  one  belief,  the  belief  in  goodness,  in 
what  it  consists,  in  what  its  successors  are,  and  its 
consummation.  The  community  may  be  sick,  but 
we  know  the  laws  of  health,  and  we  know  that  the 
health  is  possible.  Let  us  be  sure  of  this,  the  world, 
in  the  next  or  in  any  following  year,  is  never  going  to 
lose  its  best.  It  is  going  to  get  more  of  it.  And  for 
you  and  me  to-day  there  is  no  best  better  than  to 
link  ourselves  with  renewed  fealty  to  that  cause. 
Empires  may  dissolve  and  fall  around  us.  We  go 
on  building  the  City  of  God. 


lUiadlcy  Brothers,  Printert,  Ui«hop«gs(e,  E.C.;    and  Aihford,  Kent 


Princeton   Theological  Semmary-Speer   Library 


1    1012  01130 


3122 


